


Vice Versa

by jupiterss



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No IT (King), Body Swap, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, High School AU, LMAO, M/M, Rivalry, Slow Burn, actually i changed my mind sonias not gonna be that awful only a little awful, based on it's a boy/girl thing, jock!eddie, not really but still, richies parents arent that bad just absent, swearing and sexual language, the slowest burn possible, theatre kid!richie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-02-10 16:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupiterss/pseuds/jupiterss
Summary: To say that Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak didn’t get along would be one hell of an understatement.Eddie saw Richie as a degenerate smart-ass, with a mouth that he couldn’t keep shut if his life depended on it, and the most obnoxious wardrobe choices he’d ever seen anyone make. He was crass, crude, dirty, and cocky, a combination that made Eddie wonder how the hell anyone could stand to be around him.On the other hand, Richie saw Eddie as uptight, self-centred, and a massive buzz-kill. He came to school looking like he was going to church, clothes and hair all pressed and positioned. He walked around like he was better than him, nose turned upwards and an ever-present scowl on his face, or at least when he was looking at Richie.It didn’t help that they shared almost every class.And it definitely didn’t help that they were next door neighbours, bedroom windows directly opposite one another’s.To cut a long story short, they hated each other with everything they had.So when they woke up the morning after a particularly heated (and public) argument, both of them in the wrong room, in the wrong bed, in the wrong skin, well, fair to say it brought up a few issues.





	1. and don't it feel good

If given the choice to remove something from existence, most sensible people's suggestions would be akin to war, famine, homelessness, cancer, or something else along that line. Some people would be more specific, maybe choosing to rid the world of a particular person, or food, or trend in clothing. Some would say they would get rid of bagpipes, or tomatoes, or the entire concept of wearing socks and sandals. Others wouldn't be able to give you an answer, making the argument that we need the bad to balance out the good, or some other pretentious and insightful bullshit.

Richie Tozier knew exactly what he would get rid of, if given that choice. It would, without a doubt, be the song _Walking on Sunshine_ by Katrina and the Waves.

This was the thought that crossed Richie's mind as the annoyingly energetic opening drumbeats graced his ears at six that morning, as they did every morning without fail. It was promptly accompanied by the familiar sound of a window sliding open, which only aimed to amplify the sound. He gritted his teeth and mumbled something unintelligible, but undoubtedly profane, and pulled the pillow out from under him, wrapping it around the back of his head and over his ears in an attempt to drown out the music. It proved to be futile, though. Because then, right on cue, the singing started. Well, calling it _singing_ might be a bit of a stretch. He would have described it as more of a pained-sounding screech, much akin to a dying cat, or maybe a kazoo thrown into a paper shredder,

_I use to think maybe you loved me, now baby I'm sure._

Of course his next door neighbour had to have the worst voice imaginable, paired with the worst music taste imaginable (that is, one of a preteen girl). He honestly thought he would much rather be beaten over the head with a baseball bat every morning, because even that would be less painful than _this_.

The chorus started, and the 'singing' escalated from a slightly reserved cry to a full on caterwaul, his neighbour's voice cracking a little, rather comically, on the ' _woah_ 's. He let out a defeated huff, which slowly drew out into a groan. He removed the pillow, throwing it off the bed in lazy frustration, and turned his head to face the window. From where he was he could just see Eddie Kaspbrak, his personal alarm clock, sitting at the foot of his own bed, bent over himself to tie his shoes. He was still belting out the lyrics as he did so.

Eddie, at least on the outside, seemed like a good kid. ' _A_ _wrinkly old grandm_ _a_ _'s wet dream_ _'_ _,_ Richie had once said to his friend Beverly the day after he moved in next door, and though the analogy was responded to with disgust, she later discovered that he really did have a point. The boy was _constantly_ pristine, always wearing variously coloured, yet always dull-looking polo shirts, tucked into jeans that were always unreasonably well-fitted. And cardigans. Oh god, the cardigans were the worst. They looked like they came directly out of Mr. Rogers' personal collection, though everyone knew the kid didn't own a single item of second-hand clothing. Which was, in Richie's opinion, worse, because it meant that he didn't dress like that due to financial strife, and that he spent good money on new clothes that made him look like a tiny senior citizen by choice. His haircut hadn't changed since the start of highschool, the same suburban-white-father-of-three-esque side-parted quiff that never had a single hair out of place. When he wasn't dressed like this, however, he was in his P.E. uniform. That is, a grey t-shirt with their high school mascot printed on the front, and shorts. Bright red, flashy, and ever so _short_. Absolutely shorter than necessary, and shorter than anyone else on the track team seemed to have them. And once again, the Kaspbrak's didn't have an issue with money. He hadn't grown out of them and couldn't afford to buy a new pair, hell, he had barely grown two inches since freshman year. They were short, because that weirdo liked them that way, for whatever reason. And Richie didn't care enough to ask. All he knew was that they when he was wearing them, it was distracting as fuck. Every time he did his stretches on Saturday morning, after strategically placing himself in his room so Richie could see him from where he sat on the bed, reading over his play scripts, it was like he was actively trying to show himself off.

And Richie _hated_ it. He hated _him_.

He grabbed his glasses off of his bedside table and dragged himself out of bed, feet hitting the floor and pulling him into a slouched stance, and shuffled his way over to the window. He lifted the pane open with a small groan.

There was a small stretch of roof in front of both of their windows, about three feet each, the gap between the two properties only about the length of Richie's arm. Small enough to cross over with barely any effort, if either wanted to do so. Before Eddie had moved in, he thought it would have been perfect if someone came and lived there, someone nice, someone that he liked, and they could sit out on the roof and talk all night. They could have climbed into one another's rooms when their parents were asleep, or leave little notes on the glass, or even, maybe, if he was really lucky, fall in love with them. It would have been perfect, and rather shakespearian, he guessed. His own little Romeo and Juliet story. But then the universe decided to throw it's middle fingers up and say “ _fuck you,_ _you're getting_ _this hobbit instead,”_ and the only time he had ever crossed over to the other rooftop was at the start of junior year, to draw a massive, rather detailed piece of male genitalia on Eddie's window. In permanent ink, too, and Eddie had spent a good twenty minutes crouched out there in his pyjamas with a bottle of ajax and a sponge, desperately trying to scrub it off, cursing out Richie as he did so, fretting out loud about his mother seeing it. He deserved it though. He must have, even though Richie couldn't remember exactly what event had brought it on.

He leaned out slightly, fingers tapping a beat into the wood. Eddie looked up, obviously catching him out of the corner of his eye, and grinned. For a moment it even looked almost genuine. Almost. He knew better.

“'Morning Dick!” he chirped, making his way across the room, leaning against the window frame with his arms crossed over his chest. Richie pressed his lips together into a forced smile.

“Has anyone ever told you that you're a really good singer? I mean, obviously the answer is no, because you're shit, but I was wondering if maybe someone once lied to you about it and that's why you're still in denial about how terrible you are.” He tilted his head to the side. “Sorry to rip the bandaid off like that but trust me, it's better that you know.” He nodded his head, feigning sympathy. Eddie let out a short, sharp laugh.

“Oh I'm sorry Rich, was I cutting in on your beauty sleep? Is that why your face is all-” he paused, holding his hand up towards him, gesturing vaguely, “-like that?”

“Nice comeback,” Richie replied, before returning to a deadpan expression, “can you turn the music down now?” Eddie stuck his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout, shaking his head.

“Maybe if you weren't up until two in the morning reciting your weird poetry you wouldn't be so tired, ever think of that?” he asked, a mocking lilt to his voice. Before Richie could say anything in return, he reached above him and slid the window down, leaving just a small gap at the bottom as to not muffle the noise, and promptly flipped him off through the glass. The song faded to a close, only to be replaced by something equally as upbeat and obnoxious.

Richie thought that if he could remove something else from existence, it would be _Karma Chameleon_ by Culture Club.

“Fucking twat,” Richie muttered under his breath, just as Eddie's curtains were pulled shut. He sighed in defeat, shutting his own window and rolling his shoulders forward a few times, trying to ease some of the tension in his back. His lumpy old mattress was starting to become a prominent problem, there wasn't many days that he woke up without a crick in his neck. “Stupid mattress. Stupid shitty pop songs. Stupid fucking pink sweater _bullshit_.”

He collapsed onto the bed face-down, the bed creaking and complaining under him as he did, ignoring the painful way his glasses pressed into his face.

“' _Weird poetry_ ', like you can fucking talk, weirdo. At least I don't fucking iron my jeans.” He barked out a laugh at his own remark, then quickly realised he was talking and to someone who could not hear him, and sighed again. He rolled over onto his back, looking up at the cluster of glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling that he had put there when he was eight, only to never take them down, even as he was nearing the end of highschool. Most of them were peeling away at the corners. He had an urge to fix them, but knew he wouldn't, choosing instead to fixate on them with a weird sense of frustration.

It took around twenty minutes for him to actually get up. He only knew it took that long because five songs played during that time, averaging three and a half minutes each, he guessed. And Eddie sang every single lyric, so badly that at points Richie thought he must be consciously trying to sound worse than normal. It ended up being a rendition of _Don't Go Breaking My Heart_ , in which Eddie sang both the male and female parts, even putting the effort in to sing them in alternating pitches, that drove Richie to the edge. He threw on a pair of jeans and the first shirt he picked up that didn't look _too_ filthy, and trudged his way down the hall to the bathroom. He didn't have time for a shower, so he brushed his teeth and sprayed on an arguably excessive amount of aftershave before heading downstairs.

It wasn't necessarily a surprise to see the note on the fridge, but it still made him feel- something. Disappointment, perhaps, though he wasn't sure why it would be. It wasn't like it was a rare occasion for him to wake up to an empty household. He walked closer. Words scribbled on a piece of yellow lined paper torn from a legal pad, obviously done in a rush, held up by an old souvenir magnet from Niagara Falls. That trip had been before Richie was born, back when he figured his parents still led relatively interesting lives. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe it was a gift, and his parent's lives were never extraordinary in the slightest, not even enough to go to Ontario. He had never thought to ask.

_Will be back tomorrow night. Leftovers in the fridge. -Mom x_

He read the words aloud to himself, his voice sounding all too loud now that he was aware there was no one else to hear it. He told himself he didn't care, because truthfully, he wasn't sure if he did.

His parents weren't _bad,_ per say. They did care about him, obviously, they must have. When they were home it was nice, they ate dinner together in front of the television, he helped his mother with the dishes, his father gave him pocket money for mowing the lawn. Hell, they even actually talked sometimes, mostly about the sports his father watched. Richie loved those talks, even though he really didn't have any interest in the subject matter. No, they were fine parents, he thought, perfectly fine. The problem was that they were rather... absent. Increasingly so since he hit high school. Nowadays it seemed that they were gone more than they weren't, either gone on some sort of business trip, or working late shifts, or his mother was at her book club, or his father was at the sports bar downtown. There was always something, and they barely ever specified what it was. Sometimes a week would pass and he wouldn't see them at all.

He swallowed the hurt that had started forming in the back of his throat, god knows he didn't need to acknowledge it, and opened the fridge. Empty. Like, absolutely empty.

“Good one, ma.”

He let the door swing shut and close with a soft thud, and took one last look at the note, as if it had somehow changed in the last ten seconds, or maybe to make sure he had read it right. Ten words are a lot to handle, after all, he easily could have misread it. But, unsurprisingly, he had read it right the first time, his parents still weren't home, and he would nothing to eat but cup noodles for the next two days. He didn't get the chance to mull over it for much longer, because right then a car horn sounded from outside, announcing his friend's arrival.

He bounded down the driveway to Mike's vega, where Beverly was leaning against the side of the hood, the front seat shifted forward already for him to climb into the back seat. He never understood how they had conned him into sitting in the back every day, seeing as he was tallest out of all three of them and the car was so small he would have been uncomfortable even in the front, but they had, and he did, and every day his back hated him for it. _Don't complain_ , he reminded himself as he contorted himself into the seat, _at least it's better than the bus_. He sat in the middle of the bench, legs awkwardly spread apart, but it was the only way he could fit semi-comfortably.

“Any interesting developments today?” Mike questioned as Beverly readjusted the seat for herself.

“Eh, same old. Little fucker called me ugly, I told him 'at least I don't iron my jeans'.”

“ _Noice_ ,” Bev exclaimed, swinging the door shut. The engine revved to life again and Mike pulled out onto the road the road.  
“Yeah, would have been pretty good. Except I didn't actually say it while he could hear me, so it's fucking wasted,” he huffed, slumping back into the seat, not that there was much room to do so.

“Nah, just save it for next time,” she replied, shooting him a toothy smile over her shoulder which he returned.

“Sadie's for breakfast?” Mike asked, and Beverly made a noise of excitement, sitting up in her seat..  
“Hell yeah, we have time?”

“There's always time for Sadie's, miss Marsh,” Richie remarked, leaning forward over the centre console.

Sadie's was a small, relatively popular fast food joint in town. An unsuspecting visitor would undoubtedly be discouraged when entering; the establishment was cramped and borderline claustrophobic, the purple and white clad employees were always abrupt and rude, the floors were sticky and the tables hardly ever clean, and the food was downright awful and way too overpriced. But everyone knew you didn't go there for the service, or the food, or the atmosphere, or any of that crap. No, you went to Sadie's for the shakes. Those vanilla shakes were what kept the damn place in business, and for good reason. They were _heaven_ _,_ a perfect balance of flavour and consistency _._ Anyone who ever had one would tell you that it was the best thing they had tasted in their entire lives. No one could figure out how to recreate it, either, and not through lack of trying. No matter what people did, how closely they watched through the narrow window into the kitchen as they were being prepared, how many different variations and measurements and methods they tried, nothing was ever as good. It was almost magical. Richie and his friends probably went through over twenty a week between the four of them -the three in the car, plus Stan, though he often unfortunately missed out on their impromptu snack runs due to him refusing to ride in Mike's car.

They arrived just under ten minutes later. The restaurant was situated between two other buildings, looking almost like it was shoved in there at the last minute, and there wasn't actually anywhere to park. Bev quickly hopped out and gave a two fingered salute before marching inside, and Mike began to drive around the block, as he would do multiple times as they waited for Beverly to retrieve their order. The two of them sat, the radio filling the gaps in the comfortable silence between them.

“ _And coming up next,”_ the voice on the station hummed as the song faded out, _“to brighten your drive to work on the glorious Monday morning;_ _a hit from Katrina and the Waves-”_

“ _-_ Oh god.”

Mike laughed as Richie lurched forward, his fingertips just barely brushing the radio dial before Mike grabbed his wrist with one hand and keeping the other on the wheel. The drumbeats faded in. Richie felt like he might cry.  
“Fucking hell, Hanlon, please don't make me listen to it,” he pleaded, sounding so genuinely desperate that it only caused the other to smile wider.  
“Aw why? Don't you like this song?”

“You know damn well I do _no-_ watch the road, man!”

Mike swore under his breath and swerved back into his own lane, not letting up his grip on Richie's wrist despite his squirming.

“Driver picks the music, Rich,” he jeered, shoving Richie backwards. He fell back with an exaggerated groan, letting his head roll back against the edge of the seat. The lyrics started, and Mike started to sing along, or at least tried to. It quickly became clear that he didn't know any of the words.

“You suck,” Richie hissed, though it lacked any real heat.

“I know,” he returned, flashing a smile in the rearview mirror. It was so innocent looking and contagious that Richie had to bite back one of his own. _Damn it Mike_ , Richie thought, _why'd you have to be so pretty, huh? Cut me some slack here._

They went around the block twice before they spotted Beverly standing on the curb. In that time Richie did his best to block out the song, and the one after that, though the second one didn't make him want to rip his hair out nearly as much. He could only thank god that Mike wasn't one to blast his music at a ridiculous level.

Bev swung down into her seat, carefully balancing the cardboard cup tray on the centre console before shutting the door and doing up her seatbelt.

“Alright, pay up. 'Dollar seventy five,” she held her hand palm up over her shoulder, directed towards Richie. He dug around in his pocket and came up with a crumpled bill and a quarter, and placed it in her hand.  
“I owe you fifty cents,” he said, reaching forward to snatch one of the drinks. He had to stop himself from straight-up moaning as he took a first sip. “ _Holy fuck_.”

“Mhm,” Bev hummed in agreement, lips wrapped around her own straw.

“Oh my god, Bev,” Mike said abruptly, “you'll never guess what came on the radio.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr @kinghanscom if you wanna check that out aha  
> thanks for reading!


	2. carry on my wayward son by kansas

In all honesty, Eddie knew that spending the first half an hour of his morning torturing the hell out of his neighbour by blasting terrible pop songs from over a decade ago was a tremendous waste of time. He knew he could be doing so many other things with it, he could take extra time in the shower, or go running, or leave the house earlier so he could walk to school rather than catch the bus. If he was a smart, sensible, rational human being, he knew he would be using that wasted time to do something productive. But he wasn't, and he didn't, and he chose instead to wake up a minute before six every morning, slide his cd (aptly labelled ' _songs that piss_ _off_ _tozier_ ', by the way) into his stereo, and strain his vocal chords until his throat was raw. Was it excessive? Probably. Was it worth it? He wasn't sure. Some days he couldn't help but think that the amount of satisfaction he received wasn't nearly weighing up to the effort he put in, and he was, quite frankly, getting _really_ sick of the music. But as much as it annoyed him, his stubbornness, along with the knowledge that it annoyed Richie even more, kept him going. Day after damned day he stuck to his routine, never allowing his energy to falter, always making sure he was stocked up on throat lozenges.

As usual, he kept an eye on Richie through the crack in his curtains as he played out his little game, seeing how long it would take him to crack. It usually took around five tracks- as seemed to be the case today. Sometimes he didn't last even that, though, there had been days when he disappeared before the end of the first song. Those tended to be good days for Eddie, as he got to go around feeling sadistically triumphant. On the other hand, Richie had definitely put him through his paces a handful of times, sitting it out for ten, sometimes fifteen numbers, until he couldn't force himself to belt along anymore and just ended up turning the music up to full volume instead. One time, he had actually sat through the entire album, albeit looking stone-faced and miserable the entire time. Of course, they both ended up being late for school, missing a good chunk of the first period, and he hadn't attempted to do it again since, but Eddie had been so taken aback and, oddly, _impressed_ at the feat that he switched the music off the next morning- out of respect, he guessed, as if to say “ _okay, you win this round. I'll play fair.”_  
He waited until he saw Richie leave his room, disappearing into a different part of the house, before moving over and pressing the stop button on the stereo, putting a halt on his one-man duet. The room was suddenly flooded in silence, a very faint ringing in his ear. He wondered, briefly, how long he could keep this up before he went deaf, but he quickly decided that he didn't really care, that if he was going to be permanently disabled from something, at least that something gave him a sense of fulfilment.

He then realised how weird – and mildly depressing – it was that _this_ was what gave him a sense of fulfilment.

He didn't let himself dwell on the matter. Instead, he made his way to the bathroom down the hallway.

Eddie's bathroom was the most organised aspect of his life. And that was really saying something, seeing as his sock drawer was arranged by colour and he used print-out labels on his stationary. It wasn't that he couldn't handle clutter – god, he would never be able to step foot in his own living room if that was the case, Mrs. Kaspbrak was about three antique shop visits away from being considered a chronic hoarder – it was just that he preferred if things, or at the very least, his _own_ things, had their place and stayed there. When everything was neat, life was easier; he didn't lose or misplace his belongings nearly as often, and he could better keep up with his routines. Plus, his childhood mysophobia remained etched into the back of his mind, (though it had a much looser grip on him now, thanks to intensive therapy and 'exposure to the real world' - whatever the hell that meant). So he kept his bathroom meticulous, from the toothbrush in it's holder that got thrown out and replaced every two months, to the towels on the rack that he kept pressed, folded, and clean, to the bottles of shampoo in the shower caddy, the same brand he had been using for as long as he could remember. And of course, the medicine cabinet was no exception. He held an odd sort of pride about how tidy it was, how every box and tube and orange pill bottle had it's own spot, how he could have reached up and grabbed the exact thing he needed without even looking because he knew _precisely_ where every single thing was. It was quite a feat, too, as the contents of that cabinet were enough that he could have run a mini pharmacy out of his own bathroom. Not that he actually needed _everything_ in there, but his mother had always insisted that it was necessary to be cautious, and he wasn't one to argue with his mother about those sorts of things.

He started going through his tasks, starting with brushing his teeth for two and a half minutes, counting down the seconds in his head, then flossing – yeah, he was _that_ guy, who would have guessed – then brushing out and combing his hair to his preferred, uniformed style, frowning at the way it had started to curl slightly below his ears, and made a mental note to schedule a hair-dressers appointment sooner than when he had it written in his calendar. With one final fix of his collar, a sharp exhale through his nose, and an affirmative nod to his reflection, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

His mother was rarely ever awake before he left for school in the mornings, not since she started taking sleeping pills that he was sure had to be strong enough to knock out an elephant if they allowed her to snooze through his daily karaoke sessions. He appreciated the brief amount of time he had alone, though, without her breathing down his neck or asking him a million questions like she would in the afternoon.

He glanced at the clock on the wall – an old, clunky, wooden thing that, like most of the house's furnishings, looked mismatched and weathered, and chimed a broken tune every hour on the hour. He hated it, but his mother insisted it was worth something, as with every other knick-knack and painting and piece of silverware that she collected. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea of it, really, but he would never complain. At least she didn't make him wear second-hand clothes.

He knew he didn't have time to sit down and eat, so he grabbed a granola bar from the pantry and slipped his shoes on at the front door before heading out. He was three steps out onto the patio when an overly loud and drawn out car horn made him nearly jump out of his skin. Mike Hanlon's god-awful, alarmingly yellow chevy vega was parked out the front of the house next door. The passenger side door opened, and Beverly _something or other –_ starts with an 'M', he thought – hoisted herself out to lean against the side. She shot him a glance, tilting her chin up with at him, smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. He ignored it and kept walking, not looking back when he heard Richie running and greeting them.

It was only an easy two minute walk to the bus stop, -or a thirty second mad dash to the bus stop on the days where he lost track of time, which was annoyingly often, but thankfully not today-, and he ate as he strolled down the street, breaking off bite-sized pieces of his cereal bar before popping them into his mouth one at a time. He shoved the empty wrapper into his pocket as the bus pulled up and the doors swung open, the driver looking like she'd rather be anywhere else. He gave her a curt nod before moving inside.

The bus was full but not crowded, and his eyes scanned over the rows of faces before landing on Ben, who was already looking expectantly at him, his hand raised in a lazy sort of wave. He shuffled down the aisle and sat down next to him, shrugging his backpack off and putting it on his lap. His hands absentmindedly fiddled with a zipper as Ben moved his headphones off his ears and let them rest around his neck. Eddie could faintly hear the beginning of _You Got It_ _(The Right Stuff)_ playing from them. He thought briefly about throwing in a quip about his friend's music taste, but he knew that would make him just about the biggest hypocrite in the world, so he held his tongue. Instead, he offered up a smile, which Ben promptly returned.

“Are you as totally excited for this math test as I am?” He asked, obvious sarcasm lining his words. Eddie groaned.

_The quiz, you fucking idiot,_ his internal monologue started, _it was literally written on your calendar and you forgot the damn quiz._

“Kill me.”

“So you didn't study at all, then?”

“Nope.”

Ben let out a huff of a laugh and patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey, shouldn't be too bad. Besides, it's only, like, five percent of your grade.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie flashed him a tight-lipped smile, and Ben put his headphones back on, shifting his attention to the scenery flashing past the window, grey skies hinting at the storm on it's way, as he had overheard the night before while his mother watched the news. A harsh electrical storm, blowing in from the north.

Eddie didn't like the rain. Too wet, he thought. Obviously.

The bus ride was short, far too short for his liking, and he felt his stomach drop as they pulled up outside the school. He honestly didn't know if he could handle another one of his teacher's “ _can I see you after class”_ talks that he would inevitably be facing after he handed in his quiz. They always left him with his chest feeling tight, wound up like a coil, and stubbornly holding back tears. He didn't know why it always made him feel like shit – because honestly, he had had his fair share of derogatory and vulgar comments made about him and to his face that barely made him bat an eyelid – but the disappointed looks and concerned tones surrounding questions like “ _is everything okay at home?”_ just hit him hard in a way that nothing else did. He could handle people hating him, spitting on him, drawing dicks on his window ( _permanent fucking marker_ ) – all those things were fine. He seriously couldn't care less what his classmates thought of him. But an authority figure being less than satisfied with him? He might as well jump off a cliff.

As with most of his anxiety-ridden thoughts that clouded his head, he forced it aside before it spiralled.

They walked to their lockers on the east side of the school, having a one-sided conversation about some book Ben read. Eddie didn't pick up on the name. Something about Omens, maybe. He mentioned angels a few times. It sounded too religious for what he though Ben usually read, but then again, he wasn't really listening. He was too busy trying to figure out who's back it was that was standing next his locker as they approached, talking to Bill Denbrough. Whoever it was, they had Bill grinning like an idiot as he leant against the wall, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt to look casual, but falling an inch short of succeeding.

Neither of them paid attention to Ben and Eddie until they were within earshot, and the aforementioned whoever-it-was turned out to be Stan Uris, holding a takeaway cup with _Sadie's_ printed in a cursive font down the side, and Eddie caught the tail end of what could only be a factoid about birds before he cut their conversation short by clearing his throat. They both looked at him, apparently surprised by his presence, going by their expressions.

“Hey E-Eddie,” Bill started, straightening his posture.   
“Morning,” Eddie replied, glancing between the two of them. There was an awkward silence that followed briefly after. Ben made the remarkably smart decision to busy himself at his own locker a few spots down. Stan bit his lip, averting his gaze when Eddie made eye contact. “You're in the way,” he stated, as neutrally as he could manage. Stan startled, jumping back from his spot as if the metal door had burned him.   
“Oh, shoot. Sorry,” he mumbled, then looked back to Bill. “I'll, uh, I'll see you in class Bill.”

“Y-yeah,” Bill returned, “s-s-see ya.”

Eddie watched Bill watch Stan leave, brow furrowed ever so slightly.

“What's that about?” he asked, skimming through the stack of notebooks in front of him.

“What's what ab-bout?” Bill answered with a question, sounding just a little bit defensive. “He's m-muh-my lab partner. I'm allowed to t-talk to my lab partner.” Eddie scanned him for a moment before barking out a laugh.

“Never said you weren't.” He pulled a heavy and battered looking textbook out and closed his locker, clicking the padlock shut. “You were just acting kinda weird, s'all. Smiling and stuff. Were you talking about birds?”  
“I'm nuh-not weird. You're weird. Shut up.” Eddie raised an eyebrow at the reply. He saw a blush start to creep up Bill's face.

“Okay, weirdo,” he said after a beat, smirking. Bill frowned.   
“You c-cuh-can't be rude to Stan just bec-c-cause he's friends with Richie. He's actually-” he hesitated, nervously running his tongue over his top lip, “He's n-nuh-nice.”

“I wasn't being rude,” Eddie scoffed as Ben strolled back over to them, clutching his books to his chest.

“You k-kinda were.”

“Okay, well, I wasn't. But sorry anyway, I guess. Don't know why you even care.”

“We should get to class before the rush starts,” Ben cut in, ever the peacemaker. Bill looked like he was going to interject, but snapped his mouth shut.

The trio split at the end of the corridor, Bill turning right and heading towards the art studios and Eddie and Bill going left towards the math department. It was a little more crowded, students starting to file into the building from the quad. Ben and Eddie stayed close to the wall, as always, a precautionary effort to limit the amount of bruised shoulders they would get from the barrage of people pushing past them.

They were the first to arrive, as per usual, entering the room and taking their seats near the window a solid minute before Mr. Young – hilariously ironic name, by the way, the guy was practically a dinosaur – showed up and waddled over to his desk, looking just about as pleased to be there as Eddie was, which was to say, he would rather be getting his tonsils removed. More students filtered in, the bell rang, Mr. Young closed the door and took attendance, and then moved up and down the aisles of desks, placing a short stack of papers on each, printed with daunting mathematical equations.

“One hour,” he instructed as he went, voice absolutely void of energy, “black or blue pen, show your work,” Eddie watched him from his peripheral as he wandered around the room, seeing him pause briefly in front of Richie's desk in the back corner. “No talking,” he bit, and Richie snickered, before he continued on his route. He dropped back into the swivel chair behind his desk with a quiet groan, and adjusted the thin wire-frame glasses on his face. “Begin.”

 

The rest of the day was slow. Eddie had completely rushed through the test, blanking out on a few more questions than he would have hoped. And despite how hard he had tried to send a telepathic message that he was completely opposed to the idea, Mr. Young had still asked him to come back at the end of the day. Unsurprising, but still disappointing. He made a mental note to work on his telepathy skills.

Really, it hadn't been as bad as he had worked it up to be. He had, in fact, improved since the last test, and he did _pass,_ technically. He was asked the usual questions, accompanied with that pitied tone and concerned head tilt, then Young advised a few extra hours of study, and gave him the number of a tutor written on a post-it note that he would undoubtedly throw away, before waving him off and sending him out of the classroom. Of course he knew the buses had left already, and he would have to walk, so he took his time at his locker, taking the opportunity to straighten it out and re-stack his books.  
He hadn't noticed it had started to rain, however.

“Great.”

He stood just in front of the heavy doors leading down to the steps at the front of the school, sheltered under a small bit of roof. He stayed there for a few minutes, switching between hyping himself up to _just go already_ and staring intensely at the sky as if he could intimidate the rain away, but quickly realised that, even if it was physically possible, the sky probably wouldn't be even slightly affronted by someone wearing a pink sweater.

Ben would be on the bus, and Bill would have already driven home. He had no choice.

“Just fucking _great.”_

“Are you waiting for something, or-”

He startled, whipping around and nearly losing his balance in the process. The voice belonged to Stan, he discovered, standing in the doorframe with a deadpan expression.

“Wh- huh?” he asked, apparently too busy trying to regain control of his breathing to say something more coherent.

“You're in the way,” Stan said. After a beat he smirked, then laughed. “Ha, get it? Because you said that to me earlier. That's kinda funny, right?”

He gaped a little, looking confused, and Stan's smile faltered.

“Are you okay? Why are you just standing out here?”

“I- uh. I'm not. It's raining- uh,” he winced a little at his own awkwardness. Stan's brow furrowed.

“Good observation,” he said, looking over Eddie's shoulder, as if he was affirming the fact. Eddie mentally slapped himself. “Can I get past? I have things to do.”

His eyebrows felt like they might disappear into his hairline as he realised he was, indeed, completely blocking the doorway, and that Stan wasn't standing and talking to him voluntarily. He stepped back, mumbling an apology, and Stan sucked his teeth and walked past, stopping at the edge of the stars. The rain started to paint dark spots on his blue button-up. He turned back around, hands gripping onto his bag straps.

“Do you need a lift or something?” he asked, sounding mildly exasperated. Eddie's eyes went wide, and Stan rolled his own. “I have to drop something off at Richie's anyway. You may as well just come.”

He turned on his heal and started walking again, in the direction of the student parking lot. Eddie didn't move for a moment, until Stan turned around again.

“You coming or not?” he yelled, cupping one hand around his mouth. Eddie swallowed, then jogged to catch up to him.

Eddie learned three things about Stan Uris on the short car ride back to his house. One: he liked Kansas, which was actually kind of surprising, – the band, of course. He wasn't sure about his opinion on the state, though he was sure it was probably neutral. Two: he liked birds – there was a keychain hanging off his backpack with a picture of a bird on it. A sparrow, maybe, but Eddie didn't know enough about the topic to decisively say what it was. And three: he was _immaculate._ The inside of the small hatchback was spotless, not a speck of dust to be seen. He actually felt almost dirty in comparison, which was no small accomplishment, because he literally carried hand sanitiser around with him at all times.

The drive was spent in complete silence – aside from the Kansas album – and he only hoped it was as awkward for the other as it was for him. He didn't attempt to make small talk, and neither did Stan, thankfully. He mumbled a thanks as they pulled up outside of his house and he got out, cautiously closing the door behind him, not wanting to slam it. He watched the car roll over to the front of the Tozier household.

 

He was barely two steps into the threshold before his mother's voice was ringing throughout the house, coming from the living room.   
“Eddie-bear! Is that you?”

' _Who the fuck else would it be?_ ' is what he thought of saying.

“Yeah ma, it's me,” is what he actually said, kicking his shoes off near the door before rounding the corner to where she was seated in her old floral-patterned recliner, television playing some cooking show on how to properly prepare lamb. He didn't mention that neither of them ate lamb, or that 'cooking' in their house was taking pre-battered fish out of a box and putting it in the oven. Instead, he moved over to plant a dry kiss on her cheek.

“How was your day? Did anything exciting happen?” she asked, sitting up slightly in her chair.

“Same old same old,” he said with a shrug. She hummed, in that light, vaguely condescending way she had perfected. He ignored it. “I've actually got some homework, so I'm gonna go to my room.”

“Alright sweetheart,” - _ugh-_ “just make sure you're cleaned up for dinner.” She punctuated her sentence with a grin. He nodded, kissed her on the cheek again, and hurried up the stairs.

 

The rest of the afternoon went by, and he finished about half the work he was supposed to get done. He cleaned up for dinner, ate, tiptoed around his mother's questions about school, then went back upstairs, changed, and resigned to his bed, content to lie there until he fell asleep from boredom. It wasn't until around nine that he heard it. The window sliding open, the hushed whispers, the _giggling_.

Richie had a girl over.

_Perfect_.

He shot over to the window, pulling the curtain open just enough for him to see through. He kind of recognised her, the girl that sat next to Richie in the science labs, he thought. Sarah or something – anyway, didn't matter. She was sitting on the mattress across from Richie, laughing – obviously an act – at something he was saying, all blonde hair and perfect teeth. There were books open on their laps, but he doubted any studying was actually happening. This was an opportunity, he thought, for what he didn't really know, but he felt like he should do something. He didn't have long to mull it over, because Richie stood up and left the room. Eddie caught the words “bathroom” and “wizz” before he exited.

_Now or never, Kaspbrak._

He pulled the curtains open and hoisted the window pane above his head. The noise caught her attention, and she jumped a little, but seemed otherwise un-phased.

“Oh, _you're_ Eddie. Right,” she looked him up and down, the corner of her mouth twitching up, “Now I get it.”

“So, are you guys, like, working on a project or something?” he said, brushing her statement aside – _now you get_ what _? - s_ winging his leg up so he was sitting side-on on the windowsill.

“Yeah, well-” she paused, biting her lip, “no. We're in the play together.”

Eddie nodded, feigning interest.

“So, it's shakespeare, yeah?” he asked, glancing at Richie's door for a second to make sure the coast was clear before continuing, “Has he, like, said anything about that?”

She creased her brow, standing at moving closer to the window. “What do you mean, ' _said anything'_?”

Eddie sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I don't know if I should say, but-,” he looked to the door again, “he has this... _thing._ With the shakepeare stuff, it's-,” he hesitated, wracking his brain for something to say, “I mean, I hear a lot of stuff, he leaves his window open a lot, and-”

“Seriously, what is it?”

“I've heard him, uh-,” he gestured vaguely with a hand, flicking his wrist in a circle, “I think he kinda, you know,” he leant over a little, and she mirrored him, “I think he _gets off_ on it.”

“Um, what?”

He shrugged, mouth pressed into a tight, awkward smile. He didn't know at what point he decided he was going for the shakespearean fetish angle, or if that was even a thing, but he figured _hey, no going back now._

“Yeah, like, he'll just be _reciting_ it while he's- you know.”

Sarah – Stacy? Shit, he needed to pay more attention to people's names – looked, frankly, disgusted. He wondered for a moment if that might have been a step too far, if she was going to slam the window shut and yell at him for being a creep, which, if he was being honest, he wouldn't blame her for. But she didn't do either of those things, because apparently, Richie only brings home the most gullible people in the world.   
“Seriously? Jesus, I wouldn't think that he – he didn't seem that weird at rehearsal.”

There was a flushing sound, and Richie sauntered back into view.   
“Alright, let's get back-” he looked at Stac – nope, definitely Sarah –, then at Eddie, then back at Sarah. His expression dropped, and the girl scoffed, moving to collect her pile of things off the bed. Eddie bit back a smile.

“Wait, stop, what did he say?” Richie pushed almost desperately, hovering over her as she shoved her stuff into a backpack. “What the fuck did he say?”

She shoved past him, leaving in a hurry. Richie watched after her for a moment, then turned his sights on Eddie, who at this point had a shit-eating grin plastered right across his face.

“What the _fuck_ did you say?” he repeated, storming over to the window.

“I didn't have to say anything, Rich,” he jeered, “I guess she just realised how repulsive you are.”

“Get fucked, dude, what the fuck did you say?”

Eddie shrugged, and swung his leg back over the sill, hopping down onto the carpet.

“You're a little shit, you know that?” Richie spat.

“Harsh words, Dick.”

With that, Eddie slid the window back down and pulled the curtains shut, but not before seeing Richie's absolutely defeated expression.

He almost felt bad.

Almost.

He knew better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eddie's a fucking asshole in this holy shit im sorry,, he won't be so mean the whole way through i promise  
> okay im super not happy with this chapter but like,, i can't be bothered with it anymore. It's super long, it drags, the ending was rushed and sloppy and really weird??? i wrote the last scene while half tipsy so like ,, shush  
> hope u guys like it my tumbler url is kinghanscom


	3. lightning before the thunder

Mother Nature must have had it out for someone in Derry, because the storm hit _hard._ Overnight, the roads were flooded, trees bared of their leaves, some smaller ones nearly uprooted from the harsh winds, and though it had since reduced down to a drizzle, the sky remained dark and threatening well into the morning.

Richie didn't like the rain. Everything was wet and cold and grey, and that one part of the roof in the hallway always leaked, and the thunder meant he barely got any sleep, and his midday smoke breaks with Beverly were compromised. But, rather than feeling miserable about the weather, he woke up on that Tuesday morning with a newfound appreciation for it.

The storm had blown the power out.

There wasn't any music, or horrid singing.

The window was still closed.

Eddie wasn't awake yet.

_Holy shit._

The grin that took over Richie's face then and there was only comparable to a child's on Christmas morning. Giddiness bubbled up in his chest, and he giggled – actually _giggled_ – at the feeling. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this unashamedly happy right after waking up – to be honest he thought this might be the happiest he'd ever been, maybe period. He chose to blatantly ignore how sad that fact was.

 _This was going to be a_ great _day,_ he thought.

He practically skipped down the stairs at seven- _ish_ , graffitied-to-all-hell backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing (relatively) fresh clothes and his favourite, most obnoxiously coloured hawaiian shirt over a white long-sleeved one, with his hair hanging over half his face, still damp from the shower. _Morning showers, ah, how he'd missed those._

He hummeda tune absentmindedly as he went about collecting his shoes from where he had thrown them haphazardly into the living roomthe day before. He couldn't quite place where he'd heard it, for a while. He was just about to shrug it off, until he caught himself subconsciously singing.

“ _I used to think maybe you loved–_ FUCK,” he hit his palm against his forehead, as if he could physically dislodge the song from his brain. “Damn it, Kaspbrak.”

 

Beverly raised an eyebrow at him as he strutted out of his house, half a minute after Mike announced their arrival via car horn, smiling wider than she had ever seen him.

“What the hell are you so happy about?” she asked as he approached, faking a scowl.

“And hello to you too, gorgeous,” he winked, and proceeded to make a show out of taking her hand and bringing it to his lips, planting a kiss on her knuckles. She snorted out a laugh and yanked her hand back.

“Seriously, did you hit your head or something? Wait,” she did a double take, mouth falling open in an overly exaggerated gasp, smacking her hand over her heart, “did you actually _shower?_ Who're you trying to impress, Rich?”

He shrugged, sucking in a breath through his teeth.

“Nobody, my dear,” he reached forward and took the cigarette from behind her ear, turning it over in his fingers before putting it in his own mouth. She made an annoyed sound in protest, but didn't actually stop him from doing so. “Today's just my day, y'know? I can feel it.”

“Well, could you bring it down a notch? You're making the rest of us look more miserable in comparison,” she brought her hand up to ruffle his hair. He laughed, jerking his head away. Something shiny caught his eye as he did.

“Would ya look at that,” he said, slightly muffled by the cigarette, and leant down to pick up the piece of copper. He held it up in front of his face, squinting slightly to make out the engravings.

“Lucky penny,” Beverly teased, crossing her arms over her chest, “guess it really is your day.”

“Yup,” he flipped it in the air and caught it, then shoved into the front pocket of his jeans, “guess so.”

“How goes it, Mikey-boy?” Richie asked as he squeezed himself into the back seat, without half the usual displeasure.

“It goes fine,” Mike replied, “you're very chipper this morning. Anything interesting happen?”

“Maybe,” Richie said, smug as anything, for some reason. Mike shot him a slightly confused glance in the rearview mirror but didn't press the matter. “Sadie's? We have heaps of time.”

“You still owe me for yesterday's,” Beverly reminded him as she swung herself into the car, “but I'm game.”

“Oh shoot, hold on-” Richie started patting himself down, searching his pockets for spare change. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans, awkwardly thrusting his hips up as he did. He pulled out what he thought was a dollar bill and dropped back down into the seat. “Here's- oh!” He held up the crumpled tenner, attempting to straighten it out a little.

“Aw, Richie! So nice of you to pay for everyone!” Beverly grinned before snatching the note out of his hands. Richie let her take it.

“Just give me the change, yeah?” he laughed. An old Billy Idol song faded in on the radio.

 _Oh yes,_ he thought, sneaking one look back up at Eddie's window – he could _just_ see out the back windscreen that the curtains were still closed – _this was going to be a_ great _day._

 

Eddie was having what was possibly the worst morning that anyone had ever had in all of human history, and it was _unbelievably_ unfair, because he had never done anything wrong in all his life and he did _not_ deserve this to be happening right now at _all,_ and the universe or whatever was making him go through this terrible fucking morning obviously had a personal vendetta against him. He may as well have just crawled into a hole and died because that would have had a better outcome than what was currently happening. Everything was SHIT and FUCKED and every other cuss word out there all rolled into one – and even then it wouldn't be enough to describe how downright awful this morning was for Eddie Kaspbrak.

His internalised tantrum came and went, only really lasting for five seconds before he unclenched his jaw and took a breath. Really, it wasn't that bad. Not great, sure, but not the end of the world, and he knew that, it was just good to let all the frustration out preemptively. His alarm hadn't gone off, and for the first time in four years his mother had woken him up, immediately jumping to the conclusion that he had contracted a debilitating illness overnight and that was the only reason why he would still be in bed at – god forbid – quarter past seven in the morning. He had spent a good five minutes trying to convince her that no, he was fine, his alarm just hadn't gone off, and he could still make it to school if he hurried, and she had reluctantly let him get out of bed.

Hurrying, he soon discovered, was not something that came naturally to him, nor was it something he was particularly good at, especially when factoring in the compulsivity he had when it came to his bathroom routine, the lack of power – and therefore light –, and his mother asking him if he needed help with anything every three seconds, making him feel more like an invalid and less like a kid who woke up an hour late. But he did the best he could do under the circumstances, which involved brushing his teeth with one hand and pulling his socks on with the other, and ended up leaving the house – albeit looking just _slightly_ disastrous – with just enough time to make it before the bell rang if he turned his walking speed up a to a power-walk and didn't stop by his locker first.

So he walked, fast, granola bar shoved into his pocket that he only grabbed in a last-ditch effort to calm his mother's nerves so she would release her death grip on his shoulder long enough for him to bolt, one hand desperately trying to flatten his hair out to a mildly presentable degree and the other swinging wildly at his side in time with his steps. It had stopped raining for the most part, only spitting lightly now, but he could deal with that. He just had to keep the pace up, and get to school. Easy enough, right? _Today was going to be an okay day_ , he thought, if he could just get to school without any issues.

 

But you know what they say, when it rains it pours.

 

Okay, so _maybe_ it was kind of a dick move on Richie's part. But he deserved it! For what he did the night before! So it was okay! Right?

They had picked up their shakes – and damn, they were _good,_ as always – and were on the way back to school when they saw him; head down, walking quickly, undoubtedly going to be late. He looked a lot less put together than usual, even from behind.

Richie knew he probably should have just given the poor guy a break, maybe just flipped him off out the window and let it be. He knew he _probably_ shouldn't have done what he did, that he _probably_ ruined the kid's whole day. And at the very least, he knew he _probably_ should have felt some sort of empathy after the deed was done.

But the opportunity was just too good to pass up, and Richie was nothing if he wasn't an opportunist.

So yeah, he told Mike to drive through the puddle.

 _Okay_ , he may have ordered, and then begged him, and then bribed him that he would do all his homework for a month, and then bribed him with fifty dollars. And then lurched forward and grabbed the steering wheel anyway. Not that he was desperate or anything.

It was almost majestic, in a way. The wave of water – _so much water_ , it really didn't look that deep, honest – sprayed up from the tires and hit Eddie – the poor bastard had turned around when he heard the car approaching – face on, absolutely drenching him from head to toe. And Eddie stood there, shocked expression, hands held up in a feeble attempt to block his face from the onslaught. And they drove away, Richie absolutely beside himself, howling with laughter and full of sadistic pride, Beverly with her hand covering her mouth as she tried not to spit vanilla milkshake all over the dashboard, and Mike just- well. Mike watched Eddie get further away through the side mirror, feeling guilt bubble up in his stomach. Because that's who he was, way too sympathetic. Sometimes Richie was worried it was going to rub off on him. He wasn't sure if he could handle being a good person.

 

“Oh, COME ON.”

Eddie watched after the car, at that four-eyed twit in the back seat, looking like he was going to piss himself from laughing so hard. He hadn't been driving, but it was _so clearly_ his fault, judging by the middle finger that came flashing up through the window just before the car turned a corner, and by the fact that he was an asshole, and only he would think this was funny.

He was _soaked_ , and dirty, and definitely covered in germs, and his books would be all wet, and his shoes were going to be soggy and uncomfortable all day, and his hair was going to frizz up and be all over the place, and it was cold out so he was probably going to get sick, and he was still fucking late for school.

He should have just turned around and gone home, had a shower and gone to bed, but that would have meant admitting defeat – and facing his mother, and possibly a hospital trip to check for water-born diseases, but mostly admitting defeat –, so he took a deep breath, swallowed his pride and kept walking. His shoes squeaked with every step, and he found himself pouting – actually _pouting_. And he _wasn't_ crying, it's just that there was dirt in the water and it got in his eyes, and he was only sniffling because it also got up his nose. And he wasn't _going_ to cry, because he was an adult and adult's don't cry because they get splashed with puddle water. He was going to go to school and change into his track uniform – thank god his mother made him bring it in a plastic bag, something he never understood nor appreciated until now – and he was going to miss some, if not all of first period, and he was going to feel miserable and uncomfortable all day, and people were probably going to laugh at him, and it was all going to go to absolute shit, but he was going to deal with it. Like an adult.

He was also going to murder Richie Tozier, but that could wait.

* * *

 

By the time he got to school, class had already started, and the hallways were mostly deserted. He made a beeline for the nearest bathroom, head down, trying to look unsuspicious, though he wasn't sure how well he was doing.

The thing with walking with your head down, with wet hair hanging down over your face, is you can't actually see where you're going, and eventually you're going to run into something. Or someone, in Eddie's case.

He fell back, rather unceremoniously, onto his arse. The person who's back he had just barged into only stumbled forward. Eddie thought, briefly, that that was unfair.

“Watch it,” the person spat, spinning around once they regained their footing. “Oh.”

He looked up, squinting against the fluorescent lighting. Of _course_ it was Stan. Because the awkwardness from the day before wasn't enough, obviously.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, gritting his teeth. Stan swallowed visibly, then offered a hand out to help him up. He looked at it for a few seconds, before standing up by himself. Stan frowned, narrowed eyes scanning him as he brushed himself off.

“Did you,” he said, almost hesitantly, “take a shower with your clothes on or something?”

“Hilarious,” Eddie replied, deadpan. He straightened out the hemline of his shirt. “Obviously not.” He restrained himself from throwing an insult in.

“Okay. Really though, why are you all wet?”

“Why don't you ask your friends?”

Stan shifted uncomfortably on his feet.  
  
“Richie?” He winced slightly as he said it, almost compassionately.

Eddie gave him a look that he hoped said, _'No shit, sherlock. Who the fuck else?'_

“Sorry,” Stan said, quietly, ducking his head and biting his lip. Eddie studied him for a drawn out moment.

“Why aren't you in class?” he said, his tone a lot less snarky and a lot more genuine. Stan's head shot up, frown dispersing, replaced with what _could_ have been a smile if you looked close enough, side-on, possibly with the aid of a magnifying glass..

“Study period,” he answered simply.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They held awkward eye contact for what was probably the most uncomfortable five seconds either of them had ever experienced. Eddie sucked his teeth slowly, letting out an odd, slightly embarrassing squeaking sound.

“I should g-”

“I need t-”

They both spoke at the same time, cutting each other off. It was followed by incredibly nervous laughter from Eddie. Stan scuffed the toe of his shoe on the linoleum.

“I should be studying,” he said, a little loudly, then creased his brow, looking as though he had surprised himself a bit.

“Okay,” Eddie replied, almost breathlessly, for some reason.

“So,” Stan continued after a moment, “I should go. To the library. To study.”

“O- kay?” Eddie repeated, the end of the word raising up an octave.

Stan licked his lips, eyes darting around Eddie's face. Eddie suddenly regretted every choice he had ever made that lead to this exchange.

“Bye then,” Stan said, before turning and leaving faster than he had seen anyone turn and leave before.

“Bye,” he said, even though Stan was already out of earshot.

He regained himself, waiting for his soul to return to his body after it ejected itself out of humiliation, and started walking towards the bathroom, making a mental note to never look Stan Uris in the eye ever again. Not that he thought that would be possible now.

* * *

 

“I feel bad.”

It was lunch, and Richie and Mike were sitting at their table in the corner of the cafeteria, closer to the food line and away from the doors. It was situated directly across the large hall from where Eddie and his two nerd friends sat, and when Richie positioned himself _just_ right in his seat he had a perfectly clear view of the sad-sack himself, who appeared to have switched out into his gym clothes – and gym shorts, damn them to hell –, hair still a bit wet and unkept – a very unfamiliar sight – and looked downright depressed, hunched over a seemingly untouched wholemeal sandwich. Not that Richie was looking, or anything.

“Well, ya shouldn't,” he said, pointing a plastic fork in Mike's direction, who hadn't been able to rid himself of his guilty, vaguely queasy expression since that morning. “He was one-up last night, and now the score is even. It was a fair shot.”

“Yeah, but look at him,” Mike glanced over, and Richie's eyes followed. His friend – Barry? No, Ben, yeah. The one with the stutter, or was that the other one? Anyway – whats-his-face had moved to put an arm around his shoulder. “We should apologise.”

“Don't you dare,” he said, ungraciously shoving a forkful of mac and cheese into his mouth, “no apologies. It's a rule.”

“What's a rule?” Beverly slotted herself in next to Richie, while Stan appeared beside Mike, dropping a chemistry textbook on the table. “Am I missing out on something?”

“Not a thing, sweetcheeks,” Richie said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek before she pushed him away with a look of disgust, “s'just Mikey here,” he swallowed his mouthful of pasta, “Mikey here wants to go say sorry to Kaspbrak. But we don't play like that, and he knows it. Ain't that right, Stan the Man?”

Stan glanced up from the book, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, I was actually gonna bring that up. What did you do to him?.”

“Nothing, just drove through a puddle that he happened to be standing next to and he _may_ have gotten a little rainwater on his cardigan. Not even a big deal.”

“He was _drenched,_ Richie.”

“How would you know? You talk to him this morning?”

Stan looked back down at his textbook.

“ _Maybe_.”

“You're not going soft on the fucker, are you Stanthony?”

“Don't call me that,” the tips of Stan's ears flushed pink, “I just think you should apologise for this one. You know how he is about-” he hesitated, just for a second, nose wrinkling, “hygiene and stuff. This might have been a step too far.”

“Stan, are you- fucking hell,” he exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Guys, no one's saying sorry, got it? It's done. It's _over._ I got my kick in, he'll get me back with some pathetic bullshit tomorrow. That's how it works. We fuck with each other. No one's allowed to feel sorry for him.”  
“But-”

“No, Mike! So fucking what, he got his clothes a little wet. Boo-fucking-hoo. Maybe it'll teach him to dress better.”

“He dresses pretty much the same as Stan,” Bev pointed out, “if you think about it.”

“Nah,” Richie rebutted, “Stanley dresses like, like,” he gestured his hand towards Stan, lip pursed as he tried to think of an analogy, “Stan dresses like your cool english teacher, you know? Like that one that every one likes and he's kinda chummy with you and lets you call him by his first name, you feel? He pulls it off. Kaspbrak looks like your shitty math teacher who probably plays golf on the weekends and gets pissy if you use your phone in class. Scratch that, he _confiscates_ your phone if he even _sees_ it. You know the type. He's probably gonna buy a station wagon in the future.”

There was a moment of silence, all three of them looking at Richie with varying expressions of confusion.

“That was-” Beverly said, “oddly specific.”

“Thank you,” he smirked, smug, as if it were a compliment. “Now are we done? We all agree to not apologise?”

He looked between Mike and Stan. Stan rolled his eyes, returning full attention to his textbook. Mike opened his mouth, no doubt to protest, but shut it after a moment and nodded, dropping his gaze to the tray of food in front of him with the same guilt-ridden expression.

“Great! Now that we're all on the same page,” Richie stood, picking up his tray of half-eaten food, “I'm gonna go chain smoke under the bleachers, like the good christian boy mama raised me to be. Miss Marsh?”

“M'eating,” Beverly replied, stuffing another tater tot into her mouth.

“Right,” he took a step out, not at all looking where he was going, “see you losers la- OOF.”

 

Eddie Kaspbrak was not an intimidating person. It was practically impossible for him to scare people. He was barely five foot five, standing much shorter than his friends and most of the other boys in the school, and quite a few of the girls, and despite being rather fit, he looked quite frail. When he was a kid, his mother use to say it would be easy for someone to pick him up and snap him like a toothpick, and he believed her, because back then anything his mother said was basically god's word. He wasn't hit with the same puberty truck that Bill and Ben were – instead it was more like a puberty tricycle. He never quite shot up, never quite lost the roundness in his face or had his voice drop an octave like his friend's had. He didn't necessarily still look like a _child,_ but he definitely wasn't going to be fooling any liquor store employee or nightclub bouncer any time soon. And the clothes he wore only aided to accent his non-intimidating qualities, the light coloured sweaters, the faded jeans, he knew his wasn't exactly the manliest of wardrobes.

All in all, Eddie was the last person you would expect to be able to make someone feel small.

 

Richie Tozier had never felt smaller in his entire life than in the moment that followed.

 

As timing would have it, Eddie had gotten up and travelled across the cafeteria to the garbage bins to dispose of the sandwich he wasn't going to eat. He knew he would unavoidably have to walk right past Richie's table, so he made sure to do as he always did when needing to avoid confrontation; _head down, walk quickly._

Richie had stood up, lunch tray in hand, unaware of his proximity to the other, still busy conversing with his friends. He had taken a step, then another, out into the walkway. Eddie hadn't looked up. _Head down, walk quickly._

Richie took another step, and turned around.

Eddie looked up, only a split second too late, but too late nonetheless.

Richie sentenced had been cut off by the sound of his lunch tray first hitting Eddie square in the chest, and then clattering to the floor.

The collision drew attention from only the immediately surrounding tables, hushed whispers replacing whatever conversations were taking place previously.

 

He didn't react, at first, just froze, jaw tight, gaze stuck on the floor, midway between the yellow plastic tray, face down with bits of food splattered beneath it, and Richie's worn down combat boots. His breath was so slow and shallow, there was a point that he wasn't even sure he _was_ breathing.

 

Richie, for a moment, was sure Eddie had died standing up. He was unnaturally still, just staring at the ground, completely stone-faced. _I broke him,_ he thought, _I actually fucking broke the kid._

  
Eddie looked up, finally, at Richie's face. He decided, seeing as his brain had apparently tried to reboot itself, to base his reaction on Richie's next move. He raised one eyebrow, oh so slightly. It said; _this is a test. Answer it wrong, and I_ will _kill you._

 

Richie was unbelievably put off by the look that Eddie gave him. It wasn't angry, upset, annoyed, anything he was expecting. It was a challenge. The fucker was c _hallenging_ him. And he really wasn't going to like what would happen if he lost.

 

“So,” he started, thinking harder about his word choice than he ever had before, “I know you're not going to believe me, but,” he paused, slowly raising his hands up in front of him, as if a gun was being pointed at him, “that was totally an accident.”

 

The calm before the storm, as they say.

 

“What,” Eddie said, barely a whisper, “the,” his hands balled into fists at his side, so tight they started shaking, “fuck.”

 

“Oh Richie,” Beverly muttered from the sidelines, “you poor son of a bitch.”

 

“Are you actually _kidding me,_ Tozier? Wasn't this morning enough? You have to get your fucking chucks in twice in one day?” Eddie decided then and there, that being an adult was overrated. He was a brat, and he was going to be a brat.

 

“Chill out a bit, man,” Richie took a brave step forward, snapping his head around to the growing number of spectators, “It's just a stain, it'll come out.” His voice was hushed, praying to every god he knew that this wouldn't escalate in front of everyone.

  
Eddie was fuming by now – and, ironically, kind of having the time of his life –, his face heating up, and chest heaving. He saw Richie flinch, for a fraction of a second, and felt _proud._

_God, he was a sadist._

“ _Just a fucking stain_ , are you serious? Are you actually fucking _serious, Richie?”_

 

Richie wanted nothing more than for an ten ton truck to come crashing through the wall of the school, killing him instantly.  
“Calm your shit, Kaspbrak, I'm sorry.”

 

“ _Sorry_? You're fucking _sorry?”_ Eddie had to remind himself that he wasn't supposed to look happy while this was happening, purposefully deepening the scowl on his face. “You are _the_ most inconsiderate, infuriating, irritating,” _fuck, running out of synonyms, “_ disrespectful, single-minded, asshole-piece-of-shit-stoner dickwad _,” dickwad? “_ that I have ever fucking met and I hope you burn in hell, you absolute fucking-”  
“KASPBRAK.”

Both the boys jumped, as did quite a few of the onlookers who had gathered around their little love spat. Mr. Wagner, the school principal, had pushed his way to the front of the crowd, looking red-faced and mildly disarrayed, to say the least.

“Sir, uh, we were just-”

“Can it. Detention,” he pointed a spindly finger at Eddie, who scoffed a high pitched scoff, and then at Richie. “You too.”

“But I didn't-”

“No but's.”

“BUT SIR-”

“TOZIER.”

Richie let out a defeated sigh.

“Yes sir.”

The man took a deep breath, shooting a look between both of them.

“This,” he gestured to the tray and the food on the floor, “cleaned up.” He turned to look at the crowd of students. “Nothing to see, _git.”_

Everyone dispersed, going back to their own seats, leaving only Richie and Eddie standing there, pretty much robbed of all their dignity, staring each other down like they could set fire to the other with their eyes.

“I hate you,” Richie spat, top lip upturned to show his teeth.

“Go to hell,” Eddie returned, with the same amount of passion.

“I'm already there, princess.”  
“Oh, fuck off, asshole.”

“You fuck off.”

“How 'bout both of you fuck off!” Beverly stood, grabbing Richie by the arm and pulling him away towards the doors of the dining hall, but not before shooting Eddie a look over her shoulder. “He'll see you in detention, hotshot.” She punctuated her sentence with a wink.

 _This is the worst fucking day of my life,_ he thought.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! new chapter!  
> this was probably the most fun i've had writing something aha, i got really into it near the end. it's kinda messy and chaotic but i like it :^)  
> next chapter is where the real fun begins, so you guys can look forward to that !  
> thank you for reading, kudos-ing and especially if you comment! i adore the feedback, please leave some if you have some !
> 
> tumblr is @kinghanscom


	4. can you hear the drums fernando

_Thump._

Eddie had never had detention before, and he wasn't really sure what he had been expecting. Sure, he had seen The Breakfast Club – scratch that, he had been forced to watch The Breakfast Club with Ben, who felt it necessary to add his own commentary the entire way through. Honestly, who gives a damn that the dance scene wasn't scripted? –, but considering the only person in the room other than Richie was Greta Keene, who had her headphones on blasting music loud enough that he could hear it across the room, he was pretty confident that his afternoon wouldn't be spent getting high and bonding with his classmates over their mutually shitty family lives.

_Thump._

The teacher had fucked off at some point, mumbling something about having papers to grade elsewhere, but not before telling them “not to talk – _or else”_ , as if he would know if they did. So it was just Richie and himself(and Greta, but she honestly looked like she was asleep on her desk), and he had spent the past half an hour trying to concentrate on his english homework, and desperately fighting the urge to glare at Richie. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, could see him staring, eyes narrowed, that dumb smirk on his face, leaning back on a precariously balanced chair with his stupid combat boots propped up on the table.

_Thump._

Richie knew what he was doing. He could see the way Eddie's eye twitched whenever he brought his heel back down on the desk, resulting in the resounding, rather irritating _thud._ He knew he could make him snap, if he just kept it up. Judging by the way Eddie shifted in his seat, breath coming in sharp inhales and exhales, he was pretty close to achieving his goal.

_Thump._

Eddie wasn't stupid. He knew he was getting toyed with. If he snapped, that would mean another victory for Richie. And he was _not_ getting beat three times in one day. All he had to do was wait it out, ignore it, distract himself with his work. He could do this. There was thirty minutes until the end of detention, surely Richie would give up eventually. Right?

_Thump._

Richie had no intention of giving up. He would have sat there and tapped his foot on the table for an entire day if it had even the slightest chance of pissing Eddie off even a tiny bit. Not out of pettiness, of course. He wasn't petty, he was determined. Big difference.

_Thump._

Okay, distracting himself with schoolwork wasn't helping. Maybe meditation would work. _Think calming thoughts. Sunsets. Vanilla scented candles. Sunday morning jogs._ _Uh,_ _Waterfalls._ _Etcetera._ _That's what people_ _usually_ _think about, right?_

_Thump._

Eddie had screwed his eyes shut. Richie's smirk grew. He was on the edge, not long now until-.

_Thump._

Fuck, now he needed to pee.

_Thump._

_Break, damn it, break._

_Thump._

Screw it.

“Would you quit that already?”

_Touchdown._

“Quit what?” Richie asked, feigning as much innocence as he could manage – which really wasn't much.

_Thump._

“Fuck off, you know what I mean,” Eddie kept his voice down, trying to appear like it wasn't affecting him as much as it oh so clearly was.

_Thump._

“Sorry,” Richie continued, tilting his head to the side, “you're gonna have to specify. Quit what?”

_Thump._

“I swear to god if you don't-” he forced himself to take a breath, fingernails leaving crescent shaped marks in his palm from how tight his fist was closed around the pen he was holding. He exhaled slowly. “Please, just stop.”

Richie cocked an eyebrow. The begging was unexpected, but welcome nonetheless.

_Thump._

“I really have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not even doing anything.”

He could physically see Eddie's jaw tighten; his leg started bouncing under the table, stare practically burning a hole in the paper on his desk. He looked positively _livid._ Richie was pretty happy with himself.

_Thump._

“You're so immature,” Eddie said through gritted teeth, voice barely above a whisper. He hadn't dared to look up from his homework, knowing seeing the smug look on that mother-fucker's face would undoubtedly set him off, past the point of no return.

“Oh, am I now?” Richie replied.

_Thump._

Eddie wanted nothing more than to storm across the classroom and rip Richie's legs off his body. He buried his face in his hands, letting out a quiet, muffled cry, fingers gripping at the hair falling slightly in his face. Richie revelled in the sight.

_Thump._

“Don't you get tired of being such a massive douche all the time?” Eddie asked, sounding slightly exasperated, still refusing to look up.

“Nope.” He popped the 'p' sound. “Do you?”

_Thump._

“This is all _your_ fault, you know. You couldn't just leave it at the shit you pulled this morning – which was _so_ out of line, by the way. No, you also had to make it worse by dumping your fucking lunch all over me.” His eyes flashed down to the dried out orange stain down the front of his shirt, and he had to repress a shudder. Ben had helped him try to wash it out in a sink in the bathroom, but it still looked like he had puked all over himself.

“Oh c _ome on,_ I already said that was an accident.”

“And I already said that was bullshit.”

_Thump._

“You're the one who fucking overreacted and landed us in detention,” Richie's grin lowered, replaced by an expression of annoyance. “I had to miss a play rehearsal for this.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, very much exaggeratively.

“Oh _poor you,_ missing out on practicing for your stupid shakespeare play, big deal. I'm supposed to be at a track meet right now. You know, something _actually_ important.”

“What the fuck do you mean, _actually important?_ It's fucking running around in a circle. You can literally do that whenever the hell you want! I can only go to rehearsals once a week, and if I don't show up then it throws everything off.”

“Because you're _so damn_ _special_ _,_ right?” Eddie laughed, though it was unbelievably dry and sarcastic. “ _I'm_ _Richie Tozier! I think I'm_ _hot shit_ _because I know how to memorise a fucking script,”_ he paused, pretending to gag, _“_ get over yourself.”

“Get over _my_ self _, a_ re you for real?” Richie dropped his feet to the floor, sitting fully sideways in his chair. Eddie looked up, finally, brow furrowed at the other's sudden seriousness. “You're so fucking uptight you could put coal up your ass and shit out a diamond. You walk around acting like you're better than everyone else and like you couldn't care less about what people think of you, but you know what? If you _really_ didn't care, you wouldn't be putting so much effort into your appearance every day, and you wouldn't give half a shit that your shirt got a little dirty.”

“Fuck you, you don't know anything about me!” Eddie scoffed, sitting up straighter in his chair.

“I know you iron your jeans,” Richie sneered, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, _“_ and that says _plenty_ enough, sweetheart.” He made a mental note to let Beverly know that _hell yeah, he_ did _get to say it._

“At least I don't walk around looking like I just crawled out of a dumpster. I mean, do you even own a bar of soap? Or do you just spend all the time you're supposed to be showering jerking off to the sound of your own voi-”

“So, do you think about other people's masturbation habits often? Or just mine?”

“Get fucked, you're disgusting.”

“Oh sure, call me disgusting. And you say _I'm_ the immature one.”

“You know what?” Eddie huffed, pushing his chair back from the desk and standing up. Richie mirrored his actions almost immediately, nearly falling over himself to meet him in the centre of the classroom. Both of them were absolutely seething, starting to square each other up. Richie thought, briefly, that Eddie was genuinely going to punch him in the face. It excited him, in a way. A strange, twisted way. “You have it so damn easy. Everyone at this school thinks you're so great _, 'Trashmouth Tozier gets off another_ _good_ _one! Alert the FUCKING press!'”_ His hands flew up as he spoke, gesturing wildly. _“_ But really you're just a moronic asshole who apparently can't even dress himself. I don't know how people even tolerate being around you without ripping their own hair out.”

“You don't know shit, short-stack. You think I've got it easy? You've had everything handed to you on a silver platter your entire life. Everyone knows your mother still does everything for you because you're too much of a priss to get a job.”

“Don't you dare,” Eddie's tone turned ice cold, spitting words like poison through his teeth. He took a step forward so they were only inches apart, poking a finger at the centre of Richie's chest. “Don't you _dare_ talk about my mother.”

“Why?” Richie leaned closer, so his lips were so close to Eddie's ear he could feel his breath against his skin, smirk slowly returning to his face, “she told me all about it last night, when we were fucking in her-”

Eddie shoved him away with a surprising amount of force, red-faced with anger, the ferocity of which he was pretty sure he had never experienced before. Richie stumbled back a few steps, before regaining his footing, shaking his head with a dark laugh low in his throat. He felt like a bad comic book villain. _The Evil Doctor Fucked-_ _Y_ _our-_ _M_ _om._

“Did I strike a chord there, Eds? Don't like hearing me talk about fucking your-”

“I'M LITERALLY GOING TO MURDER YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD RICH-”  
“ _HEY_.”

Both of their heads snapped towards the front of the classroom. Greta was turned around in her chair, headphones around her neck, chewing on a stick of gum and looking impressively unimpressed and unfazed by the scene playing out.

“Would you two shut the fuck up? _Jesus._ ”

Eddie's jaw went slack, staring dumbfounded at her, as if he had totally forgotten she was in the room – well, he had, but that wasn't the point. Richie looked somewhat similar, except his lips were pressed into a fine line. He nodded at her, rather frantically, but didn't say anything. She looked back and forth between the two of them, undoubtedly thinking something along the lines of _'what a couple of total whackjobs'_ , smacked her gum, rolled her eyes, and slipped her headphones back on. Eddie dropped back into his chair, making a point of angling himself towards the wall. He heard Richie's sit back down as well, chair scraping loudly against the floor as he did.

They both sat, silently fuming, the quiet being interrupted only by a very muffled David Bowie song coming from Greta's headphones and the tantalisingly slow ticking sound from the clock hanging above the chalkboard at the front of the room. Eddie glanced up. Twenty four minutes to go. He sighed, resigning to rest his head on his desk. The paper from his open notebook was cool against his forehead. He could still faintly smell the cheap pasta sauce on his clothes.

_Thump._

“I hate you.”

_Thump._

“Ditto.”

_Thump._

 

Detention came and went. The teacher reappeared sometime during the last ten minutes, at which point they had all but passed out from boredom, and had let them off early. Probably more for his own benefit than any of theirs, they figured. Greta left quickly, standing up and making her exit without even so much as a backwards glance to check if she'd left anything behind. Eddie unceremoniously swept his belongings into his backpack, while Richie stretched his arms above his head with an obnoxiously loud groan.

Upon actually leaving, they realised pretty fast that they were, in fact, going to have to walk the same way home.

Eddie tightened his grip on his backpack straps, pulling the bag closer to his body. He walked quickly, determined to just get home and out of Richie's sight for as long as he could reasonably manage. He also, for some god-knows-what reason, felt the need to get home _first,_ as if winning an imaginary race would make him feel better about everything that happened that day. It would, because that's the kind of person he was, but still. Unfortunately, Richie Tozier was a fucking giraffe, and only had to take one step where Eddie took two, which only fired him up more. What's more, he apparently picked up on Eddie's intentions, and he wasn't willing to end his winning streak just yet.

“Why are you following me?” he spat, about three steps outside of the school building. It was a dumb question that he didn't actually care about the answer to, but Eddie, if it wasn't already clear, thrived on confrontation.

“I'm not following you, dipshit. We live next to each other,” Richie returned with just as much venom, side-eyeing him with a scowl, “or have you forgotten about that? Has the sound of your mom's headboard banging against the wall every night done something to your memory?” He paused, then pitched his voice up an octave, “ _Oh, oh Richie, yeah, fuck me good, yeah baby, ohh~”_

“Go to hell, man, you're not even funny.”

“Well _I_ think I'm pretty damn hilarious.”

“Hop off your own dick, Tozier.”

“Only if you remove that stick you lodged up your ass.”

Eddie rolled his eyes so hard they could have dropped out of his head.

“Ha, sure, I'll let you know how that goes,” he replied, completely deadpan, picking up his pace to the point where he may as well have been jogging, effectively putting an end to the argument that he instigated. Richie debated with himself if he should try and keep up, but knew it was altogether pointless. He was already starting to get out of breath and the soles of his feet were aching, and he had no doubts Eddie would start running if he was pushed to do so, and he wouldn't have a sliver of a chance then. Better to forfeit now than embarrass himself later, he figured. He watched him walk away, with his dumb backpack and dumb tube socks and dumb red shorts with the white hems that were riding up his thighs and drawing way too much attention to certain, uh, _areas_.

Not that he was looking, or anything.

 

The sun was already on it's way down by the time he rounded the corner onto his street. He didn't even notice the metallic blue Buick parked in the driveway until he was practically standing next to it, but the sight instantly relieved some of the stress weighing down his shoulders. After everything, at least he wasn't coming home to an empty house again.

He swung the front door open with purpose and walked inside, carelessly flinging his backpack to the floor and toeing off his shoes – or rather, hopping around on one foot as he tried to wrestle his shoes off his feet and nearly face-planting directly into the corner of the hallway cabinet instead of just untying his shoelaces like a normal person.

“The prodigal son has returned!” he called out, discarding his footwear inside the threshold before strolling into the kitchen. His mother was standing over the sink, scrubbing out a tupperware container with two others sitting in the rack, water and dish soap dripping off them and onto the bench. She looked back at him over her shoulder, flashing a tight lipped smile before returning her attention back to her task.

“How was school?” she asked, almost hesitantly, like she had to think about the question for a bit.

Richie moved over to the fridge, clicking his tongue as he pulled it open to see that it was still empty. He pretended to look through it as if it wasn't.

“Eh, same old. Kicked ass, took names, etcetera etcetera. How was work?”

“We had Thai,” Maggie answered – but didn't really answer –, placing the container alongside the others and pulling the plug in the drain, “there's some leftovers in the microwave. You can just heat it up for a few minutes.”

“You're not staying for dinner?” Richie asked, hoping it sounded more curious than disappointed.

“It's Tuesday, honey,” she picked up the towel sitting on the island counter and dried her hands, “book club's on Tuesdays. You know that.”

“Oh,” he closed the fridge, pushing it shut gently, “right. Book club. Gotcha.”

Maggie dropped the rag back on the bench and moved into the living room. Richie hesitated for a moment before following.

He leaned against the archway, watching as she stood in front of the bookcase, fingers tracing over each spine as she muttered something to herself that he couldn't hear.

“What about dad?” he asked, feigning as much casualty as he could.

“I think he picked up a late shift,” she answered, pulling one of the books out from the shelf – a very worn paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice, go figure – with an almost silent 'aha!'. Richie chewed on the inside of his cheek. “He should be back around nine. Maybe.”

“Cool,” he sighed, “cool cool cool.”

Maggie picked up her handbag – an ugly beige thing that she was gifted forever ago and wouldn't get rid of, Richie had an odd distaste for it that he couldn't quite place, because who knew why he even cared enough to dislike it, but he did – from where it had been thrown on the couch, sliding it onto her shoulder and slotting the book inside. She took one last sweeping glance around the room, as if she might be forgetting something, then nodded to herself and turned to Richie.

“I have to go,” she took a step towards him, reaching up to touch his shoulder, a proper smile on her face, teeth and all – straight and perfect, something Richie didn't inherit. It was a rare gesture, and he couldn't help but return it. “Get your homework done, okay?”

“Ugh, fine,” he rolled his eyes, but his smile didn't falter. She breathed out a laugh, then dropped her hand, turning towards the door. “Love ya, have fun!”  
She waved over her shoulder before pulling the door closed behind her. He listened to the car engine start up, smoothly, a stark contrast to Mike's clunky sounding crapbox.

“Love you too, Richie” he whispered to himself, once he heard the car leaving the driveway. He stared at the closed door for longer than he'd ever admit before moving upstairs.

He flopped ungracefully onto the bed, face up with his arms and legs spread out like a starfish. The mattress springs squeaked loudly under the impact. There was so much uncomfortable frustration building up in his gut he thought he might explode. He inhaled sharply through his nose, held his breath for as long as he could, then exhaled heavily. It didn't help, so he resigned to grabbing the pillow and holding it down over his face, and screaming into it. It helped, a little bit.

 

“Am I a bad person?”

Eddie was lying on his back, his head nearly hanging off the foot of the bed, ankles crossed over each other and the house phone sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear. His hair was still damp from the shower that he had made a beeline for as soon as he got home. He had been so eager to rid his skin of the filth that he hadn't even spent his usual three minutes adjusting the temperature, nearly burning himself under the stream of water as he scrubbed his skin to the point of irritation, but damn it if it didn't feel good. He washed his hair twice, used up half a bar of soap, and even brushed his teeth for good measure – despite knowing he would do it later anyway – all in the span of twenty minutes, (the maximum amount of time he knew he could get away with before his mother was knocking at the door asking what was wrong).

He scratched at the skin around his fingernails, something his mother called a 'bad habit', but what he called a 'perfectly healthy coping mechanism'. He couldn't actually say what it helped him cope with, though. Maybe stress, or something. He used to say it was boredom, but Ben had been quick to point out that ' _I don't think you can_ _have coping mechanisms for being bored, Ed_ _die_ _,_ _'_ so that answer had dried out.

“ _Yeah, you're the w-wuh-worst,”_ Bill's voice came from the other end, through a laugh. Eddie exhaled sharply, lips tugged into a lopsided smile.

“Gee, thanks,” he replied, tone dripping with sarcasm.

“ _Why are you suddenly wuh-worried about being a bad p-puh-person?”_

“I dunno,” he winced as he snagged a bit of skin a bit too hard, “I just feel kinda shitty for some reason.”

“ _Well, you d-_ _d-_ _did call someone a d-dickwad today,_ _and got detention._ _”_

“Hm,” he rolled over onto his front, propping himself up on his elbows and repositioning the phone on his shoulder, leaning his head more to the side so it wouldn't slip. His feet kicked absentmindedly in the air. “So I should work on my insults? Is that what you're getting at?”

“ _Maybe muh-more along the lines of not insulting p-puh-people in the first place?”_

“Sounds boring.”

“ _Well, it's a start. If you w-wuh-wanna be a better person.”_

“I really hate how logical you are sometimes,” he groaned, “I need to start calling Ben more often. He doesn't try to use his common sense against me.”

“ _Yeah, he_ _'s a keeper!”_

Eddie snorted out a laugh, and Bill giggled on the other end. It was cut off by muffled yelling in the background, and Bill sighed heavily.

“I gotta go, mom n-needs the phone.”

“Lame,” Eddie huffed, “fine. See you tomorrow.”  
“See ya.”

The hang up tone sounded, and he tossed the phone on the bed beside him – except it landed on the floor with a loud thud, and he swore and scrambled to pick it up and check for damages. There weren't any – to the phone, at least, but he did fall pretty hard on his knees. He cursed again, loudly, then instinctively whipped his head up to check to make sure his mother wasn't standing at the door. He may have sworn like a sailor around friends, but he did have a reputation to keep up around his mother. He was a good boy, as far as she knew, and ' _good boys don't cuss,_ _Eddie-bear'_.

She wasn't there, probably too invested in whatever uninspired cooking show was playing on the food network downstairs. He sighed, clutching the phone in his hands, rubbing his thumbs on the smooth plastic.

A good boy, but a bad person, apparently.

 

Neither set of curtains was pulled back that night. It felt kind of foreign to Richie – to not check in on the other before hitting the hay. It was part of the routine; homework, dinner, toss a few insults at your neighbour, brush your teeth, go to bed. But then again, he figured they had probably both had enough of each other that day to last an entire week, and he wasn't too fussed about sticking to a routine anyway.

So he left the curtain closed, even when he could hear music coming over from the other's bedroom; not the same songs from their morning fiascos, it was something different, less ear-bleed and more toned down, laid back, almost _nice,_ even _,_ pop music. The usual singing didn't come with it, either, nor the deafening volume. He could have ignored it, if he wanted to, grabbed his walkman and his headphones and drowned it out, but of course that would mean going through the whole ordeal of untangling headphone cords and picking a CD and actually finding his walkman under the pile of mess on his desk and a whole bunch of other reasons he would convince himself of instead of just admitting that maybe he did like one or two ABBA songs.

So he hit the light switch, jumped into bed, put his glasses on his nightstand and closed his eyes, the lyrics to Fernando aiding him in his attempt to blank-slate his mind and fall asleep.

 

Eddie was going blind.

His mother had warned him about not using the reading glasses he was prescribed, and he hadn't listened because he thought they looked ridiculous and he thought she, like the optometrist, was just overreacting. He hadn't worn them, and now he was going to be blind forever, and he would have to get a guide dog – he didn't even know how to act around dogs – and he would have to wear tacky sunglasses everywhere and go to school for blind people, and he would never be able to watch a movie again, or read a book, or see his friend's faces, or go to an art gallery, or _anything._

He really regretted not watching more sunrises.

He blinked rapidly, nose wrinkled as he raised his hands in front of his face, only to see two vaguely hand-shaped blurs in their place. He let out a concerned whine as he sat up, squinting around the room. He couldn't make out much, but it felt _off,_ somehow. He was pretty sure his bedsheets were grey, not red, and if the thing in the corner that looked kind of like a desk was in fact a desk, then it had been moved overnight from the opposite wall. And if he remembered correctly, the window had been on the left of the room, not the right.

Was he dreaming? A dream where everything was backwards, inside out. Bill would say inverted, but Bill was a pretentious dick who got an A+ on his art history paper, and now Eddie would never get an A+, or even his shitty C- again because he was blind and he'd never be able to write again.

He reached for his nightstand, fumbling around for the pair of bifocals that he kept there for the sake of making it seem like he used them. Miraculously, he made contact with what felt like spectacles, albeit seemingly more thick framed than what he remembered his to be – briefly annoyed by the fact that they were face-down, and the lenses would be scratched, but willing to brush it off considering his list of other concerns that seemed slightly more pressing. Pushing them onto his face, Eddie looked around once more, vision now restored to it's usual clarity.

And unless a literal tornado had managed to make it's way inside the Kaspbrak residence overnight, this was _definitely_ not his room. The décor was, in a word, fucked, there were so many items of clothing littering the floor that he couldn't have told you the colour of the carpet if he tried, there were glow in the dark stars covering the ceiling, and the door and windows were opposite where they usually were. Eddie felt like maybe watching Alice In Wonderland at 3 am at Ben's last week combined with the cold he had gotten yesterday after Tozier's little stunt, was giving him an interesting, if slightly mundane, fever dream.

And so, convinced he was still asleep, he got out of bed.

Turning left in the hallway, he shuffled to the next door along, peeking into his mother's room, or at least, what should have been his mother's room.

“Momma, I'm not feeling too-”

The cold of the tiles stopped him in his tracks, as he looked around the bathroom, far messier than usual, in confusion.

“Okay Eddie, it's fine, don't worry,” he said, approaching the mirror slowly, “you're going blind, and crazy, or maybe your mom's gone crazy again, and wrecked the bathroom, and your voice has dropped becau-”

He stopped in front of the mirror. After a brief fit of surprise-induced giggles, Eddie Kaspbrak locked the bathroom door and climbed into the bath, content that if he was going crazy, at least it was consistent. He hadn't imagined that his neighbour had such bad eyesight, but apparently his subconscious had, because right now, his subconscious had decided that instead of showing him his own reflection, it would show him that of Richie Tozier's.

After getting over the initial shock and downright hilarity of the situation, he decided it would be best to wake himself up. It was just a dream, after all. A sick, twisted, horribly realistic-feeling nightmare. He pinched the skin on his forearm, resulting in a mild sting that, to his brow-furrowing confusion, didn't do the trick. He repeated the action, harder this time, but again to no avail.

He bit the inside of his cheek. This wasn't working.

He tried a few more times, working himself into mild hysterics as his pinches became harsher and more painful, leaving reddening marks on his skin yet not having the required effect of waking him the fuck up.

In a last ditch attempt, he slapped himself across the face as hard as he could.

“Fuck,” he rubbed the aching, slightly tingly skin on the side of his face.

This wasn't a dream.

_Oh._

_Oh no._

_Oh fucking hell shit **no**._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello this was cowritten by my friend Li @themobileappsucks on tumblr  
> hope ya'lL like it thank you so much for the comments and kudos aa!!!! 
> 
> my tumblr: @kinghanscom


	5. panic ! in the bathroom

Richie would have been ready to accept that he had started cleaning and moving furniture in his sleep as the reason why his room looked completely different when he woke up, if it weren't for the magazine pullout poster of Christian Slater staring him down from the opposite wall. Because that _definitely_ wasn't his, and even if it had somehow made it's way into his possession, he doubted the sleepwalking version of him had the coordination to hang it as straight as it currently was. He sat up, scanning the room with owlishly wide eyes, darting back and forth. It was all eerily familiar, in a way that he couldn't place, but he was too busy trying to register how his vision was so clear, despite the lack of glasses on his face, to think much about where he had seen that particular duvet before.

Slowly, he pulled back the covers to reveal that he wasn't wearing the boxers he had gone to bed in, but a pair of light blue pyjama pants – he was pretty sure he hadn't owned actual pyjamas since middle school –, and either his depth perception had gone whack, or his legs were a whole lot shorter than he was used to them being.

After a hot minute of thinking it over, he came to the very logical conclusion that there was only one explanation for his predicament; he'd been drugged, kidnapped, redressed, had contacts put in his eyes, and placed in the bedroom of a teenage girl, and his kidnapper would soon appear and force him to live out some sick fantasy while Jason fucking Dean watches it all happen from across the room, that bastard. It didn't quite explain the leg thing, but he was happy to put that down to the drugs having not quite worn off yet.

He nodded to himself, strangely at peace with the situation. If this was going to happen, at least it wasn't in some gross basement or shed somewhere. He had a window and a closet and everything! And _damn_ , this mattress was so much better than his own, no uncomfortable lumps or broken springs poking into his spine.

And hey, no more Eddie Kaspbrak, right?

No more morning karaoke, no more bad insults, no more gym shorts, hell, this whole ordeal was sounding better by the second.

He slid his feet onto the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed – and would you look at that, they even provided him with a pair of those fluffy bed socks, _nice_ – and stretched his arms up and behind his head before standing.

There wasn't any visible locks on the door, so he figured he should probably see if he could find a bathroom. He padded across the room, his mind starting to wander. He would sure miss his friends, and the school play would probably fall apart, damn it, but maybe with some clever coercing he could get his kidnapper – whoever it was – to bring him a Sadie's shake once in a while.

Just as he reached his hand out to grab the doorknob, he caught sight of his reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall, instinctively turning his head towards the movement.

He watched as his expression changed from confusion to shock to disbelief and back again all in the span of three seconds. He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and rubbed, hard enough for him to see white spots behind his eyelids, and when he looked again it took a moment for the residual cloudiness to dissipate but once it did, he realised his eyes weren't just playing tricks. He really _was_ seeing this.

He saw the blood drain from his face, his reflection staring back at him in utter horror.

Except it wasn't _his_ reflection.

 

Eddie was brought out of what could only be described as a psychotic episode in a bathtub by the sound of someone screaming – and to his surprise, it wasn't him. It sounded far off but not that far off, and it took him a second to realise it was coming from next door.

He picked himself up and decided to go investigate, figuring whatever the cause of it was couldn't have been any weirder than what he had already gone through that morning.

Eddie, as he would discover, was making a habit of speaking too soon.

He ventured cautiously back into the bedroom – _Richie's_ bedroom, the thought sent a shudder through his entire body – cringing as he stepped over a questionable-at-best looking pile of laundry on his way to the window.

He second guessed himself as his hands flew up to grasp at the curtains. Bill had once made him watch Psycho, that old black and white horror movie, at a sleepover once, and he could almost picture some crazed loon on the other side once he opened them, wielding a knife in a raised fist. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that strange screeching music started playing. It was an abstract thought – he wasn't in the bathtub anymore, and this wasn't a shower curtain, it was a regular curtain, also if someone was going to murder him they probably wouldn't just stand on the roof and wait for him to open the window – but to be fair, he _was_ in the middle of a mental breakdown, so who could blame him if his thought patterns were a little off-centre?

So he flung the curtains open, before he could lose his train of thought again (because today it was a freight train and it didn't seem to follow much of a schedule), and yep, that was his house he was looking at, judging by the faded white paint, chipping off the weatherboard in some places, and the brownish-reddish tiled slope of the roof and the black metal drainpipe going down the side. When he looked to his left he could see his mother's car, mint green and tacky, and when he looked to the right he saw his backyard with the wooden fence and the lawn that was way overdue for a mow and the lemon tree that they planted a lifetime ago that never actually grew any lemons. And he couldn't see much of it through the gap in the curtains, but that was his bedroom.

He pinched himself again, just to be sure. But it yielded the same results as it did in the bathtub, which was to say, absolutely nothing.

As if on cue, the other set of curtains were thrown open, and Eddie was looking at... himself. A very mortified version of himself, on the other side of the glass, whose eyes went as wide as saucers and who honestly looked more offended than anything, before he started shouting a muffled and barely comprehensible string of curse words, one accusatory finger jabbing against the window every now and then.

Eddie did little more than raise an eyebrow as the bombardment continued, rendered practically immobile from shock. And he must have passed out or something, because the next thing he knew he was lying on the floor looking up at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. And he honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry or scream or wish that someone _would_ come and stab him, maybe that would release him from whatever this personal hell had been created for him was.

But, he did know that he was totally and utterly f-u-c-k-e-d.

 

Richie was experiencing an intense mix of emotions, that was for sure.

He allowed himself to seethe for a minute after Eddie – he figured that had to have been Eddie, right? If he was reading this whole thing correctly, that is – went down, before attempting to recollect himself.

He didn't know at what point he decided that the other boy was the root cause of this, but he must have been. It _had_ to be his fault... somehow. And, continuing with the pattern of coming up with completely logical reasons behind strange situations that he kept finding himself in, he concluded that Eddie Kaspbrak was either a witch, and this was all part of a curse he had placed on him, or a literal demon sent from Satan himself to torment him by making him live through his own worst nightmare. All because of a stupid puddle and an even stupider cafeteria fight.

Both possibilities seemed entirely plausible.

Maybe he read too much Shakespeare.

He pulled himself away from the window after a while, muttering nonsense under his breath as he went about ridding himself of those awful, tasteless, incredibly comfortable pyjamas and finding something to wear – not the most difficult of tasks, considering the fairly immaculate state of Eddie's wardrobe. He had to give him credit, the boy sure kept his underwear drawer neat. He threw on the first things his hands landed on – a pair of light-wash jeans and a maroon coloured polo – all the while avoiding looking in the mirror, as if he would turn to stone or something if he did. And honestly, it wouldn't even be that surprising.

He crept out into the hallway, head darting around himself to check if the coast was clear before he continued. A loud rumbling sound coming from one of the rooms nearly made him jump out of his skin. He froze in place, balanced awkwardly on one foot due to being mid-step. It happened again, a low, choked sort of vibration followed by a heavy exhale. It took him a moment or two to realise it was just someone snoring, and Eddie didn't have a large animal living in his house. God, his brain was really going haywire today. He figured he didn't want to risk waking Mrs. Kaspbrak up, so he cartoonishly tiptoed past the door until he reached the top of the stairs.

The rest of the house was... different than he had expected. After seeing Eddie's bedroom, with every poster in it's place and every polo shirt on it's hanger, he had thought that trend would continue into the other rooms. Instead, the living room was full of mismatched clutter, old newspapers and catalogues and porcelain figurines crowding every surface, multiple variously coloured quilts draped over the sofa and armchair, both of which looked completely dissimilar. There were decorative plates in an open shelved cabinet against one wall, the blue and white kind with random bits of scenery or farm animals painted on them. The wallpaper was floral patterned, beyond faded and altogether tacky. There was a wooden clock in the kitchen that looked like it came from two centuries ago, with yellowed glass and roman numerals instead of numbers. Everything smelt almost overpoweringly like bad lavender-scented air freshener. Essentially, it was the kind of house you would expect to find twenty odd cats in, but there were no animals in sight.

Suddenly curious, he opened the pantry. Nothing interesting, spare a bulk supply of granola bars and a complete lack of anything remotely appetising. He moved on to the fridge, finding it stocked with microwave meals and unlabelled jars and various fruits, and on the middle shelf a paper bag with ' _Eddie :)_ ' scrawled on the side. He grabbed it and closed the door.

 

After a period of time spent staring at the ceiling that was probably a bit longer than what would generally be considered normal, Eddie stood up and decided the best way to start making this chaos less chaotic was to find some pants. It would have been a relatively simple task, if he didn't have any standards, but apparently he did, and digging through the mountain of dirty laundry in the middle of the room was not something he really felt up to pursuing. So he stepped around it and opened the wardrobe, stepping back as more clothes just came falling out as they had obviously been shoved in there with _no_ regard or care, and filtered through the few things that were remaining on the rack. He found a pair of dark jeans and a blue button-up that actually looked decent and smelled clean, thank god, and quickly got dressed. He hesitated before stepping back into the bathroom, worried about having to look in the mirror again, but he wasn't letting anything stop him from performing basic hygiene. He sucked it up and opened the door.

Shielding his eyes from his reflection with one hand, he used the other to search through the drawers under the sink for a toothbrush, surprised to find the bottom draw practically full of them. He was taken aback for a second, eyebrows drawn quizzically before the mental image of Mr. Tozier leaving the house in a doctor's coat popped into his head and he remembered that Richie's dad was a dentist.

Hey, if nothing else good was going to come out of this experience, at least he could get some free toothbrushes.

The thought excited him more than it should have, he realised.

He shrugged it off.

Refusing to make eye contact with himself, he brushed his teeth, rolled on deodorant, sprayed on whatever cheap aftershave it was in the blue bottle on the counter, and ran his hand through his hair once or twice, continuously getting his fingers caught on knots. He searched the drawers again but he couldn't actually find any sort of hairbrush or comb. Because of course he doesn't own a fucking comb.

He shook the annoyance out of his system and left the bathroom, quickly finding his way down the hall and downstairs. He had been so wrapped up in his own head that he didn't notice the other occupants of the house until it was too late. He swallowed hard, standing on the bottom step, his hands dead straight at his side.

“Morning sweetheart,” Richie's mother crooned, standing over a frypan, the contents of which sizzling away. The smell of bacon grease hit his nostrils, and he wrinkled his nose. He wasn't too big on unhealthier foods, the bland white meat and frozen vegetable meals his own mother made at home meant the fattier and greasier foods upturned his stomach a little. “D'you have time to sit down and have breakfast?”

A ruffling sound turned his head. Richie's father was sitting at the head of the dining table, today's paper in hand, mug of steaming black coffee to his left. He cleared his throat, peering over the top of the page.

It was so unbelievably picturesque and cliched that he had to blink twice to ensure he was really seeing it.

“You gonna answer your mother, Rich?” he asked in a low voice, one eyebrow quirking up. Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but a strangled choke came out instead. Mrs. Tozier looked up, corners of her lips downturned. He shook his head quickly and tried again.  
“I'm not really hungry,” he managed, then tried smiling. It felt uncomfortable and incredibly forced, and considering the look she gave him in return, probably made him look sick. But she didn't press, thank god, and returned to her cooking, flipping the bacon strips over with a spatula. Mr. Tozier flicked his wrists to straighten out his paper and continued reading. Eddie left swiftly, picking up the backpack that was discarded near the front door and pulling on Richie's combat boots.

The other boy was waiting near the fence separating the two properties when he got outside, looking beyond pissed off and also quite bewildered. Eddie visibly shuddered when he saw _himself_ standing there. It was so gut-wrenchingly surreal, the term 'out-of-body experience' just didn't cut it. He started to walk over, and the other looked prepared to say something undoubtedly angry and obscene, before a loud vehicle came to a stop at the footpath, and he jumped when the horn sounded. He looked to the car just as the passenger side door opened, then back to Richie, who seemed to be just as stumped on what to do as he was, then back to the car.

“Richie!” Beverly Marsh called out, holding the door open and waving him over with the other hand. Eddie looked over again, lips pulled into a slight grimace. Richie glared, mouthing ' _go'_ aggressively at him. He took a deep breath and turned, walking up to the yellow contraption. Beverly looked him up and down, half-concerned and half-amused.

“What's with the get-up?” she asked, obviously suppressing a laugh, “You look like you're going to communion.”

Eddie decided, in a brief moment of sensibility, that talking would probably have a worse outcome than not talking would. So he shrugged, gripping onto his backpack straps and rocking slightly on his feet, before stepping past her and getting into the back seat on the car – easier said than done, apparently, Richie's body was nowhere near as flexible as he was used to, and he felt uncomfortably claustrophobic as he practically folded himself in half to fit.

Mike Hanlon was sitting in the front seat, and turned to him with – _holy shit that boy is pretty_ – a smirk, brow creased slightly.

“You okay this morning? Looking a little pale,” he said in a smooth voice, and Eddie suddenly felt a whole lot calmer, and _what the hell? Who the fuck even_ is _this? How?_

“M'fine,” he replied quietly, and Mike looked like he was going to talk again but Beverly swung herself into the car and shut the door, interrupting whatever it was he was about to say.

“Straight to school today?” she looked to Mike as she fastened her seatbelt, and he nodded, turning the ignition and bringing the engine to life.

Richie watched _his_ ride drive off _without him_ and gritted his teeth.

 

The walk to school was irritating, but it gave him time to cool off – quite literally, it was cold and the thin-ass polo shirt wasn't doing shit to protect him from the elements. Should have grabbed a damn cardigan, lord knows there were enough of them in that wardrobe. Woe is him.

Walking up to the front steps of the school, he was suddenly being grabbed by his backpack and pulled behind a tree. He let out an embarrassing yelp and whipped around, seeing, well, himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath before opening them again.

“What the hell is going on?” Eddie hissed, eyes darting around them to check that no one would see them.

“I don't fucking know, I should be asking _you_!” Richie huffed, not used to having to look up at someone to talk to them. It was making his head spin.

“What? How could this possibly be my fault?” Eddie crossed his arms over his chest, hunching in on himself. “I hate this, I feel like I'm constantly gonna hit my head on something.”

Richie was about to retaliate, but his eyes drifted down to Eddie's outfit.  
“What the fuck are you wearing?” he scoffed, nose wrinkled in disapproval. Eddie looked down at himself, then shrugged.  
“I found it in the back of your closet,” he muttered, as if it wasn't a massive fucking deal. “Thought it looked alright.”

“That's where it's supposed to be!” Richie pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled, “ _I_ can't be walking around looking like _that_.”

“Is that really what you're worried about right now?”

“YES! You look like you're going to church! I have a reputation!”

“Well maybe if you did laundry every once in a while I wouldn't be-”

He was cut off by the sharp ringing of the bell, and ran his hands down his face, shifting his glasses so they fell back a little crooked.

“Let's just... try and get through class,” he sighed, and Richie bit his lip but nodded.

 

They got to class, filtering in with the rest of the students. Eddie would have forgotten himself and went to sit in his regular seat, if it weren't for Beverly coming up behind him and asking ' _where'd you run off to earlier?'_ as she lead him to their desks in the back corner. He gave her a half-hearted excuse, (he shrugged and made a 'I don't know' sound), then quickly sat in his desk and busied himself with Richie's backpack to avoid further questioning. He pulled out a tattered notebook with an impressive amount of graffiti on the cover, and eventually dug out a cap-less pen from the bottom of the bag. He watched Richie take his usual seat near the middle of the room, next to Bill, just before their English teacher strolled in, Ms. Stevens, with an awful mustard coloured blouse and a peplum skirt and tortoiseshell cat-eye spectacles attached to a thin rope around her neck and mousy brown hair pulled into a tight bun. She quieted the noise and begun taking attendance, flourished ticks next to each name she called out.

“Edward?” She asked about halfway down the list. Richie was, apparently, not paying much attention. “Mr. Kaspbrak?” She continued, glancing up with pursed lips. Eddie cleared his throat loudly from the back of the room, causing Richie to look back at him, along with most of the class. He looked confused at first, then realisation washed over his face and his jaw dropped, and he turned back to the teacher.

“Oh shit, present!” he replied, finally, sitting up straight in his chair. Eddie groaned quietly.

“The swearing isn't necessary, thank you, Edward,” she gave him a hard glare before looking back down at the list. Richie looked back at Eddie over his shoulder, grimacing. Eddie rolled his eyes.

She went through the rest of the list, Eddie actually answered to Richie's name, because he's _not_ an idiot.

“We'll be continuing with our presentations today,” she said, after setting the clipboard with the role on it on her desk. Eddie's face paled. He cursed under his breath, earning a weird look from Beverly, that he completely ignored. Ms. Stevens picked up a different slip of paper and ran one manicured finger down the list. “Edward, you're up first.”

Richie's head shot up, eyes wide, and he swallowed audibly.

“Uh,” he started, “I don't-”

“You got this, man,” Eddie's friend – Bill? – leaned over to nudge him with his elbow, giving him a lopsided smile. He inhaled sharply and pushed his chair back, standing up and walking to the blackboard, desperately willing his brain to come up with a plan. He looked across the room to Eddie, who had both hands covering his mouth and an overly concerned look in his eyes.

“Whenever you're ready,” Ms. Stevens told him, and he nodded.

“So,” he began, breath picking up a little. He didn't have an issue with stage fright, but he usually had a script to go off, not just improvising an entire presentation on – what was it? Historic figures? He quickly flicked his head around to the board, ' _Influential People of the Last Century'_ written in cursive and white chalk along the top. _Right._ “I think, personally, that the most influential person born in the last century is, uh-” he paused for a moment, wracking his brain, “uh, Malcolm Young?”

He looked at Eddie, who now looked a bit lost. A few scattered snickers came from certain students around the room.  
“Sorry, I don't believe I'm familiar,” Ms. Stevens interrupted, leaning forward on her elbows.

“He's, uh, one of the founders of AC/DC.”

This caused more defined laughter. Richie flushed, feeling Eddie's stare turn to daggers aimed right at his throat.

“Mr. Kaspbrak, did you actually prepare this assignment beforehand?” She sighed. He shook his head, turning his gaze to the floor. “Take a seat, you'll do a makeup session on your own time. I must say I'm disappointed.”

Richie trudged back to his seat. Eddie felt like he might actually explode, fists clenched tightly on top of the desk.

Richie allowed himself a smug grin, suddenly remembering that he could put this all down to payback. Yeah, sweet payback.

What a bastard.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im super unhappy with the ending but im laaaazzyyyyyyyyyyyy  
> your comments give me life <3
> 
> also this is a bit of a shorter chapter just bc im so done with writing it, usually i would go back in and add more but gbhsfakjnk


	6. run boy run

 

Seven uninspired oral presentations and a valiant attempt to set Richie on fire with his mind later – one day he would actually accept the fact he wasn't telekinetic, he swore he would – the bell rang and class was dismissed, and Eddie followed the outpour of students into the hallway. He scanned the sea of people, locating the maroon-clad boy fairly easily with his newfound height advantage. He strode over, completely ignoring and bypassing Beverly's questioning stare, and pulled Richie aside rather aggressively, so he had him pretty much trapped between himself and the wall of lockers.

“What the _hell,_ Dick, _”_ he spat through his teeth, attempting to keep his voice low to avoid capturing attention. (Sidenote, it didn't work, Eddie was just a habitually loud person, but considering what the rest of the school had witnessed in the cafeteria the day before, no one really gave the couple as much as a second glance. Most of them assumed it was probably just Trashmouth Tozier spitting some empty threats at the Kaspbrak kid, and nothing more. Which, sidenote, wasn't that far from the truth. All in all, time was sparse, classes needed attending, and no one really cared enough to watch a second fight in two days between the same two weirdos. Eddie could have probably been screeching at the top of his lungs and no one would bat an eyelid. Such is highschool. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.) “AC/DC? Are you serious?”

“What, not your taste?” Richie smirked, thoroughly amused with himself. “Should I have gone with someone in the Weather Girls instead?”

“Why didn't you just give the presentation you wrote for yourself?” Eddie's face, like his voice, was an interesting mix of anger, desperation, and terribly faux collectiveness. Richie thought his eyebrows might get permanently stuck with how hard he was creasing them.

“Mine wasn't supposed to be until next week,” Richie said, matter-of-factly, “I wasn't even gonna start thinking about it until at least next Tuesday.”

Eddie nearly blanched, as if hearing that should have been even slightly shocking.

“Richie, I swear to god if I fail that class because of you I'm gonna-,” he brought his hand up and back, and Richie flinched, bracing himself for the incoming slap. Eddie exhaled shakily and dropped his arm back to his side, then closed his eyes, letting out a defeated sigh. “What do you have now?”

“Art, you?”

“P.E.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie dragged his hands down his face in exasperation, then sighed again, as if to make some sort of point that Richie was pretty sure had already been made.

“Okay, this is fine,” he said, though judging by the complete lack of composure on his face, he was lying. “We're fine,” he repeated, “just-, try to get through today without ruining my entire life, think you can manage that?”

“Depends,” Richie crossed his arms over his chest defensively, “can you?”

Eddie sighed for a third time. Richie, quite frankly, was getting a little tired of Eddie's overdramatic ass.

“Just-” he tried to come up with a comeback, then decided against it. Because they were late enough to class as it was, of course, and not because he couldn't think of one. “Let's go to class.”

Richie nodded, though somewhat reluctant to agree and very much content to not go to class at all.

Eddie turned heel and left before the confrontative side of his brain could win him over.

 

Bill often dragged Ben and Eddie along to the art studios when their free periods overlapped or sometimes during lunch breaks if they decided they'd rather not brave the cafeteria. Bill would continue whatever new passion project he was working on, Ben would listen to music and read or study, and Eddie would consider doing homework and then do anything else, usually involving rambling on about whatever while Bill politely pretended to listen. It was decidedly one of the nicer aspects of the school, with big windows covering one wall and an abundance of posters and prints of famous paintings covering the others, student projects cluttering up shelves and racks and easels, coloured acrylic splattered on every surface, air filled with the mingling musty scents of clay and paint and something vaguely septic. And for someone with no sort of artistic talent whatsoever, Eddie had a quiet appreciation for it. It didn't feel like a classroom. If anything, the organised chaos and laid-back atmosphere gave it a very homely feel. He could understand why Bill was so content spending most of his free time there.

People were still milling around when he got there, settling onto paint stained wooden stools situated around three long tables. In the middle of each sat a woven basket overflowing with assorted fruit, spilling out onto an artfully crumpled stretch of sheen fabric. He made his best effort to look casual as he waited for most seats to be filled before he sat down, letting process of elimination aid him in figuring out which seat was Richie's regular one. He eventually pulled up a stool in between two occupied ones, one by a rather eccentric looking lass with several piercings that he could see (and undoubtedly plenty he couldn't), haphazardly applied makeup, and a hairstyle that surely had to be against school policy, the other a boy wearing a beanie that was pulled down nearly over his eyes and a black t-shirt with a band logo on it that Eddie had never heard of but already hated. He shuffled slightly in his seat, subconsciously folding in on himself. Sure, first impressions aren't always right, and he knew they were probably pleasantly decent and decently pleasant people, but that didn't mean he had to brush elbows with them. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to take much notice of him anyway.

He shrugged his backpack off his shoulders and brought it around to sit on his lap, and opened it up. There really wasn't much in it, a few loose scraps of paper, homework handouts and the like, a few more that were crumpled up into balls, a pen or two floating around, a couple of cheap lighters, a small brown paper bag that he was _not_ going to investigate, a notebook – which he had discovered in History class contained the written work for all of Richie's classes with no obvious attempt at categorisation whatsoever – and a spiral bound sketchbook. He pulled the last item out, sitting it on the table in front of him and letting the bag slide to the floor by his feet. He flipped the book open.

**Name:** Seymour Butz.

**Class:** Easy Credit.

Eddie restrained himself from rolling his eyes and turned the page, wary yet intrigued about what the rest of the book looked like.

It turned out to be a mixed bag of crude stick-figure comic strips – most unfinished or completely nonsensical –, a handful of pages just scribbled on until there was no white space left, a number of tic-tac-toe games that he seemingly played with himself, and, very occasionally, actual classwork.

And dicks.

A lot of dicks.

An abundance, one might say.

Like, on almost every page.

And not in the tasteful nudity figure study way either. While there were a few more detailed spectacles, most were more on the cartoonish, bathroom stall graffiti side, you know the ones. In all colours, shapes, sizes, and artistic mediums.

Eddie was disappointed, but really not surprised, and a little flustered thanks to one particularly intricately shaded double spreader.

He quickly flipped through until he found a blank, phallic-less page, just as the teacher – he didn't know her name – brought the class's attention to the board and informed them they were doing still lifes – a term Eddie had never heard before and was honestly a bit confused by, fruit is not alive – in any medium they feel like, and then left them to their own devices. A bit of quiet chatter picked up, but nothing irritating. He grabbed a graphite pencil off the table, stared down the centrepiece, and got started.

 

Richie got to the gym in a record breaking time of sixteen minutes, the main contributor to his tardiness being that he previously had no idea where it was. Four years of avoiding any sort of sport, career fair, or school assembly left him with a pretty limited mental map of the school. He had his daily route that took him to his necessary classes, the cafeteria, and his regular smoking spot under the bleachers. And he had never found any sort of issue with that. Until now.

He dumped his backpack onto one of the benches in the boys locker room, and immediately wondered why Eddie would ever go in there. Everything smelt like perspiration and dirty socks and _boy._ Everything looked dewy and unclean. Every flat surface had been graffitied and vandalised – his eyes drifted to a tag he recognised as one Bev used to use, and he was definitely going to ask her about that later. There was a bandaid stuck to the floor by his feet. It was gross – and if Eddie could get worked up to the point of a public standoff because a stain on his shirt, surely he would never willingly step foot in a locker room.

Richie, however, was right at home.

He zipped the backpack open and shuffled a few books around before pulling out a plastic bag with, assumedly, Eddie's school uniform in it. After a second of consideration, he ripped the plastic to get it open rather than untying the knot, and grabbed the clothes before letting the empty bag fall discarded to the floor. He quickly shucked the shirt he was wearing and pulled the new one on. Just as he began to work on undoing his jeans, his eyes fell to the shorts. And he remembered.

_Oh fuck no._

He lifted the bright red monstrosity, pinching the elastic waistband with both hands so they were on full display, and damn near scowled. Somehow they were more hideous up close. And _so_ much shorter than he recalled, if that was even possible. His expression then could only be described as pure desperation. He should have just packed up and went home.

_But he couldn't even do that,_ he thought, _it's not his home anymore._

He sighed in defeat. Whatever scrap of dignity he still had left buried deep inside him was shrivelling up and dying.

He put the shorts on.

 

To add to his complete and utter dismay, Physical Education class apparently involved a lot physical activity. He was welcomed into the gymnasium by a chorus of shoes squeaking on vinyl flooring, with the occasional whistle blow accompanied by a booming voice shouting orders like “knees up! No slacking! Quit being a bunch of pussies! I have a power complex to compensate for my tiny dick!”

Well, maybe not those words _exactly_.

They were doing laps. Running. Richie would rather gnaw through his own ankles.

No one really seemed to take much notice of him skulking around near the entrance – that or they didn't care –, and he was about to make like a tree and get the hell out of there when -

“Dude, coach was totally bugging out, where were you?”

He turned around to see one of Eddie's nerd friends – the one without the stutter, though that's about the extent of the information he had – who was panting lightly and looking at him like he had just committed a crime – which he was sure he hadn't, unless wearing gym shorts two sizes too small counts as criminal, which it should, in Richie's opinion –, the tone of his voice indicating that he must have actually been walking around the school lost for three and a half years and not just sixteen minutes. Richie blinked at him.

“Everything okay?” Nerd Friend asked, starting to look worried.

Richie wanted to scream. _No!,_ he would say, _nothing is okay! I've got a curse on me! I got kicked out of my own body! I would barely be five foot five in stilettos!_ _I can't reach the top of my locker!_ _My worst enemy is walking around looking like me and dressed like a mormon! And he stole my ride to school! I'm pretty sure everyone can see my entire ass in these shorts! The weather is terrible! And now I'm getting chastised for showing up slightly late to a class I don't even want to be at! Nothing makes sense and nothing is okay!!!_

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

A harsh whistle blow interrupted the start of Nerd Friend's next question, and they both turned their heads to look towards the coach, who was glaring at them and looked to be a couple of seconds away from marching over and dragging them back by their ears.

“Come on,” he said, and jogged back over, falling into a gap before working up to matching the rest of the class's pace. Richie took a deep breath and followed.

 

Eddie left class with a barely half finished and poorly executed fruit portrait – he had spent so long trying (and failing) to get the shading on one particular grape and ended up wasting a good portion of the hour. So he wasn't the best at time management, big deal – and a grey lead smudge on the side of his right hand hand that wasn't coming off and was really just getting worse with how much he was rubbing at it.

He had about a five minute timeframe to find Richie and swap schedules, because he was apparently too busy being annoyed to remember to do it earlier, so he walked with purpose, which turned out to be difficult when your legs have been replaced with knobbly stilts and you're approximately three feet taller than any human should be.

He was passing the language department when someone was suddenly linking their arm with his and pulling him off his course.

“Where're you off to in such a rush, buttercup?” Beverly M- something crooned, flashing him an easy smile that he didn't understand the meaning behind. She easily navigated them through the crowded hallway, headed towards the heavy doors leading out to the field.

“Uh,” he responded, sidestepping quickly to avoid colliding with someone's elbow as they widely swung their backpack on. Beverly's steps did not falter for a moment. “Class?” He continued, wondering why that was not the obvious answer.   
She responded with a laugh, unashamed, bright, and boisterous.

“Wow, first the new wardrobe and now you're skipping out on skipping? Who are you and what have you done with Richie Tozier?”

_You have no idea,_ he thought. She punctuated her sentence with a grin and tightened her grip on his arm, walking through the doors and down the small flight of stairs just as the bell rang.

She led him out along the abandoned path around the skirts of the field until they reached the bleachers, standing proudly in all their rickety glory. Eddie didn't trust the bleachers; the support beams looked too frail and a few sections were in dire need of repair. Luckily, he never really had any need to use them, having no interest in attending football or baseball games, or rallies unless they had something to with his track, in which case he was on the field anyway.

He especially didn't feel like sitting underneath the bleachers, where, besides the risk of the whole thing collapsing on top of them, it was also dirty, and smelled like something that Eddie was pretty confident wasn't a legal substance, and there were so many cigarette butts littering the ground and so much chewing gum stuck to the underside of the seats that they may as well have been sitting inside a dumpster. Beverly did not seem to share the same concerns as he did, though, as she proceeded en route to the second stand over, and then proceeded to sit. On the grass. Wearing a skirt!

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a red and white carton and a plastic lighter decorated in variously coloured star-shaped stickers. She flicked a cigarette out of the case and put the end of it between her lips before lighting it.

She seemed to lose herself for a moment then, closing her eyes when she inhaled. Eddie watched, mildly curious, as she took it between her fingers and held her breath for what felt like a few seconds too long before breathing out, the greyish smoke filtering through slightly parted lips and then dissipating in the air between them. She smiled, barely, a slight tug at the corner of her mouth.

“Are you waiting for an invitation or something?” she said, blinking one eye open and disrupting his thoughts.

“Huh?”

She patted the ground beside her, and managed to make it look sarcastic. He realised he was either going to have to sit down and be filthy and uncomfortable and risk lung cancer, or look like an insane person and hightail it out of there.

He sat down.

“So,” she started, after taking another drag. It smelt _awful._ He did his best to hide his disgust. He was only really successful in that because she wasn't facing him. “What's the 411 babe?”

Before he could even start to form a coherent sentence, she was offering him the open carton, holding it up in front of his face. He swallowed, leaning away from the box as if it might start spitting acid. (And it might have! For all he knew it could detect his fear!) He tried to think of a plan of action, but any option that immediately came to mind didn't really feel like it would be subtle enough. Smack the box out of her hand and stomp it into the ground, grab it and throw it as far away as he could and then bolt when she went to retrieve it, just start screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs, tell the principal, call the police, call his mom, call child protective services, etcetera.

(He did not, at any point in this state of internal panic, think to politely refuse.)

“Rich?”

“YOU'RE GONNA DIE.”

Beverly, for some reason, looked rather affronted by the … warning? Threat? Prophecy? Nihilistic realisation? Whatever it was, though Eddie was just about as shocked, possibly even more so.

“Uh,” she started after an extended pause, when the echo produced by his sudden outburst faded out, “okay?”

“Cigarettes,” he said, the part of his brain that was definitely not the logical one deciding to take the reigns and push him further into his hole, “they're really bad for you, and smoking is the leading cause of cancer, and your lungs are gonna go black and all your teeth will fall out and you'll get mouth ulcers and burn holes in your throat and then you won't be able to eat and you'll have to put a tube in your stomach and it'll be horrible and painful and slow and then you'll _die.”_

She stared at him, then glanced back down to the cigarette still burning in between her fingers, then back at him. He regretted not running.

Then she laughed. Well, more of a snort than a laugh, and put the cigarette back between her lips.

“Is that like, one of your new characters or something?” she asked, words slightly muffled as she talked around the object in her mouth. “It's kinda shit, but alright.”

Eddie watched as she continued to smoke, even after he assaulted her with the most sudden and blunt anti-smoking campaign to ever be presented.

“Ha,” she continued, blowing the smoke out of her nose this time, like a dragon, or a tea kettle, or something, “work on it and you might have a decent Kaspbrak impression on your hands. That'll be some good ammo for ya.”

 

Richie did not like running.

He really did not like running for thirty minutes straight.

And he especially did not like running for thirty minutes straight while getting aggressively ordered around by some middle aged balding dude in a baseball cap. There were several times during the lesson when he had to stop himself from marching up to Mr. Tinydick and shoving that silver whistle so far up his ass that it got lodged in his throat and he choked to death.

He nearly crawled back to the locker rooms at the end of it, worried that his legs would just give out at any second, or that he would straight-up pass out from exertion. There was sweat literally dripping off him and his heart felt like it might actually burst out of his chest.

“Jeez,” Nerd Friend had said to him as he was slumped over on the bench seat with a towel around his shoulders, focusing all his remaining energy (of which there wasn't much) on staying conscious, “I've never seen you this tired out from a run.”

He wanted to return with some vulgar comeback, the first to mind was, ' _oh yeah? Should have seen me with your mom last night. Yowza!'_ but what actually came out of his mouth was a drawn out, croaky whine, like the last sound you imagine a raccoon to make after it gets run over by a semi-trailer. Nerd Friend laughed softly and held out his hand.

“Okay, you really need a shower. Let's go.”

 

And so, after spending way too long standing under a busted shower hear with lukewarm water running down his back, making very little effort to actually, you know, _clean himself,_ he was back in the locker room with a bunch of other dudes in various states of undress. Great!

He quickly got dressed and shoved the shorts as far as he could into the backpack, vowing to burn them as soon as he got home.

He made his exit just as the bell rang, – which was annoyingly loud on this side of the school. Between that and the coach's whistle, no wonder Eddie was so fucking tone-deaf. The hallways started to flood with students once more, the majority of them taking absolutely no notice of him as he tried to navigate through, being rammed into and jostled around like a human pinball until he could make his way to the side of the walkway. He huffed in frustration, standing against the wall as he waited for the crowd to disperse a little.

_Damn shortstack,_ he thought, _how do you live like this?_

When the coast was relatively clear and the danger of getting actually trampled by his peers was gone, he kept walking. It was Wednesday, third period, which meant he was supposed to be meeting Bev to go smoke. He had no fucking idea what Eddie did during this time – probably attended class, like a prep, which he really was way too tired to even think about doing.

He decided to go find Eddie, though he wasn't entirely sure what he would do or say once he did. He walked out the double doors leading out to the quad, his calves protesting every step with a dull ache. From where he was, he would half to walk at least halfway across the field to get to the their usual spot under the bleachers, which, despite really not being that big of a deal, felt like he was being asked to climb Mount Everest in that moment. Except he wouldn't get to meet the president and get a cover story in the newspaper, or whatever it was that people who climbed Mount Everest were awarded with. Maybe it was just satisfaction and bragging rights. That sounded stupid. He would at least want a medal.

And so he began his ascent. It took all of a minute and a half for him to get close enough to see that Bev was already there – with Eddie. Of course. He couldn't help but feel a twang of betrayal, even though he knew that she had no idea what she was doing. For all she knew, that was Richie, just … dressed different. And more of an asshole than he was yesterday. And probably – definitely – not willing to touch a cigarette with a ten foot pole, all of a sudden. Yeah, she would have no reason to question the situation whatsoever.

Neither of them had seen him yet, but he could hear Eddie frantically going off about something that was undoubtedly out of character for Richie. He groaned. This boy was never going to make it in the world of show-business.

 

“Speak of the devil,” Beverly said, nodding towards the approaching figure. Eddie's head whipped around to see Richie – who looked horrifically dishevelled and so not up to his standards, dear god – trying to get his attention with jerky hand gestures. “Is he waving at you?”

“Uh,” Eddie replied, trying to figure out the what message Richie was trying to send through this weird interpretive dance, “I have to go.”

He stood and brushed off the seat of his pants more than he needed to before walking over. She said something that he didn't quite catch but didn't turn back to ask.

“What are you doing?” he asked through clenched teeth, pulling him into a stride beside him back in the direction of the school building.

“Trying to stop you from making a complete idiot out of me,” Richie replied.

“Yeah, you do that enough on your own,” he spat back, smugly.

“Not the time, shit-for-brains.”

“Says you.”

“Says your mom.”  
“That doesn't make sense.”

“Your mom doesn't make- argh,” he stopped walking, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Really not the time. You need to seriously chill out, dude.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What I'm talking about is you can't be giving lectures, washing your hands fifteen times an hour, or freaking out about everything. You need to not be yourself,” he huffed, “you need to be – uh –”

“You?”

“Exactly. Me. Be cool.”

“Okay, well, I can be one or the other, I mean –”

Richie gave him a pointed look. Eddie sighed.

“Look, it's not that easy, okay? In case you couldn't tell, I've never been in this fucking situation before.”

“You think I don't know that! I – fuck!” He all but smacked himself in the forehead, eyes blown wide.   
“What?” Eddie asked, tilting his head with his brow furrowed.

“The play,” Richie said, “I've got a rehearsal after school.”

“I though that was yesterday? You said they only happened once a week.”

“Yeah, well, we have to do extra rehearsals sometimes. It opens in like two weeks.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Eddie bit his lip, trying to think.

“What do we do?” he asked after a minute, worry written on his face. Richie looked at him, clicking his tongue. Eddie couldn't read his expression.

“Well,” he said, finally, his lips forming into a subtle smirk, “how do you feel about Shakespeare?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heLLO SORRY FOR THE HIATUS THIS FIC IS A BITCH TO WRITE
> 
> thank you for the feedback and support on this project, I love reading your comments they make me so happy ;u;;  
> as always, my tumblr is kinghanscom :^)


	7. kEep WITH ME fORWARD ALL thRouGH THE NIGHT

There were often times when Eddie Kaspbrak found himself in situations and circumstances that made him start to doubt his existence. Things sometimes happened to him that just seemed far too strange, surreal, or just plain ridiculous to be actually happening to a real person.

Like when he was in second grade, sitting alone under a tree during recess, and a crow stole his sandwich (turkey and swiss on wholewheat, for those who were wondering) right out of his hands, and then sat in the tree above him and _laughed._ No one had believed him when he told the class, and the mere mention of the scenario to his mother had him rushed to the doctor's office to run tests for bird flu.

Or, in fifth grade, at the Summer Festival with Bill, when he swore he kept seeing the same clown over and over again, like it was following them. Bill had just told him to stop being such a _p-puh-pussy_ , and that all clowns look the same, and that nothing was following them and he should put the paranoia to rest for once and just enjoy the damn carnival. That day had also resulted in a trip to the doctors. Something about eating too much caramel corn and nearly upchucking on the Zero Gravity.

Then, of course, there was waking up on a miserable Wednesday morning, only to find that he had been mind-swapped with Richie Fucking Tozier, and then having to attend Richie Fucking Tozier's classes and interact with Richie Fucking Tozier's friends.

And go to his play rehearsal.

No, there was no way this was really happening. Maybe he was part of an experiment; a brain in a vat somewhere, being given electric shocks and signals so he just _thought_ he was experiencing these things when nothing was real at all. Or maybe he was a fictional character, being written into a weird, ironic story by some loser with too much time on their hands.

(...)

Eddie's knowledge of Shakespeare was pretty limited. He knew Romeo and Juliet were idiots who died because of a lack of proper communication, and that there were serious repercussions for saying Macbeth in a theatre, for some reason, but other than that he was clueless. He especially had no idea who or what a Duke Orcino was, or how the hell he was supposed to memorise the entire Twelfth Night script in two weeks.

“ _-that, notwithstanding the capacity,-”_

“Thy _capacity.”_

“ _Right, thy capacity, receiveth as the sea,-”_

Richie, however, was a self-proclaimed expert on the topic. He had seen four different community theatre productions of Hamlet, and in his younger years had many times stayed up late to watch the film adaptations that aired on BBC, willing his tired eyes to stay open far past midnight but often succumbing to sleep before he got a chance to see the final act. It wasn't unusual for his parents to come home and find him splayed out on the sofa downstairs, drool collecting on the couch cushion, glasses askew on his face, and a bag of microwave popcorn discarded on the carpet – empty, spare the un-popped kernels and excess cinnamon sugar stuck around the sides –, as the light from the television painted the walls in flickering colour. He would wake up back in his own bed, though, glasses carefully folded on his nightstand and mismatched socks still on his feet, the wonderfully enticing scent of bacon grease and waffle batter floating up the stairs and under the door.

“ _-how will she love, when the rich golden – er – shaft? Like, as in-_ ”

“ _Damn it, dude, get your mind out of the gutter._ ”

He had been the first to put his name down for the play after the sign up sheet was pinned to the bulletin board outside the auditorium, and had practically jumped for joy when the results were posted a week later and he had been cast in a lead role. (Although, really, it wasn't much of a surprise to anyone, seeing as he had been dedicated enough to show up to auditions in costume. Theatre kids, man. If only he had the same drive when it came to doing his physics homework.)

From that point on, he had dedicated hours upon hours every week to play rehearsals, whether they were scheduled by the department or just impromptu between classes. And on days without rehearsal he would still spend most of his free time reading the script again and again, practicing his lines while standing in front of a mirror, or pacing around the living room, or sometimes – if he could rope them into it, or if they were just unlucky enough to be nearby – with Mike and Bev, who would give him his cues and play the necessary roles, albeit with far less enthusiasm and full-body gestures.

“ _Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her, be not denied access, stand at her doors-”_

“ _Okay, but could we try it a little less monotone?”_

“ _Oh...THEREFORE, GOOD YOUTH, ADDRE-”_

“ _THAT DOESN'T MEAN LOUDER!”_

Pretty safe to say, neither of them were particularly pleased about the current situation. (Nor was the librarian, who had shushed them approximately twenty three times since they walked into the library at the start of the lunch hour, and probably would have pulled them out by their collars if they hadn't left when they did.)

_I absolutely can NOT do this,_ Eddie thought, staring into the abyss that was the school auditorium, with it's rows upon rows of plastic seats with half a centuries worth of chewed gum stuck to their undersides and only one working spotlight and a half painted backdrop on the stage. There was a small gathering of people, none of whom he knew, though undoubtedly all theatre students, scattered among the front few rows. His fingers tightened around the already worn edge of the thoroughly highlighted and annotated script Richie had given him.

“Hey Duke,” one of the aforementioned theatre students yelled out, half turned around in his seat and cupping his hands around his mouth. He was wearing a faux fur trapper hat and a bright green and yellow t-shirt with a cartoon dinosaur on it. Eddie's soul died a little more. “You gonna stand up there all day?”

Eddie swallowed, and held up a finger in acknowledgement in their direction.

“Be right down!” he called back, before turning around to face Richie. “Nope, not doing that.”

Richie groaned. “Suck it up princess, you have to.”

“Nope,” Eddie shoved the script at Richie's chest, “I don't. And I'm not going to, so, suck on... that.”

“Right,” Richie replied, dryly, and thrusted the papers back at him. “Just go down there, read your lines, and don't miss your cues. And while you're at it, work on your improv. It's incredibly lacking.”

Before he could get another word in he was being spun around by the shoulders and pushed into the doorway, the door clicking shut behind him once he recovered from nearly tripping. He huffed and shot a glare at the other boy, now smirking at him through the small glass panel above the door handle.

While making his way down the stairs to the others, he smugly did the top button of his shirt up, after Richie had all but wrestled him to undo it earlier that day, claiming that ' _the only people that do that are geeks and priests, Edward.'_ And Eddie had rolled his eyes and tried to argue that Stanley did his top button up _all the time,_ and he probably didn't have a problem when _he_ did it _,_ but at that point Richie had already put him in a headlock, and all hope for a peaceful discussion on that matter seemed to fly out the window.

He sat down in the aisle seat of the third row, grimacing slightly as it creaked under his weight. The others were talking amongst themselves, though his attention was more focused on the array of graffiti on the back of the chair in front of him, most noticeably on the words 'JANE SUCKED TIM OFF IN THE BOYS BATHROOM' scrawled in bold capital letters. 'JANE' had a jagged line through it and 'Hayley' was written above it in different handwriting.

He wanted to gag. The floor in the boys bathroom was notoriously disgusting.

Someone cleared their throat, and he looked up to see Trapper Hat watching him expectantly, leaning halfway over the empty seat between them. Eddie blinked a few times.

“Sorry, what?” Eddie asked, resulting in a light laugh.

“You're like, super zoned out,” Trapper Hat – he looked like a Zeke, or possibly a Martin, either way it was something dumb – said. It was then that Eddie noticed the rubix cube he was turning around in his hands. Good lord.

“I'm fine,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the toy and trying his best not to make it obvious that he was screaming on the inside.

“So, were you like, actually hanging out with Eddie Kaspbrak?”

The semi-hushed tone of his voice suggested that the very idea was something incredibly scandalous, fiery gossip ready to be printed out on the front page of all of next week's periodicals. Eddie had a small hunch that Zeke, or whatever his name was, was probably this overdramatic about most things.

“Uh, no-” Eddie started, “I mean- yes. Kind of. We weren't _hanging out-,”_ his hands put air quotes around the words, and he licked his top lip nervously, trying to come up with an excuse, “-we were – paired up for a project.”

“Oh, that's harsh,” Maybe-Zeke offered, sounding overly sympathetic, “what class?”

“I don't know,” Eddie blurted out, “probably math, or, uh, some other class. You know what? I don't even remember.” He laughed nervously, mentally kicking himself. Maybe-Zeke tilted his head.

“You do group projects in math?” he asked, as if that was the weirdest part of the answer.

Eddie opened his mouth to answer, but someone else was standing up to steal their attention, waving their copy of the script in the air and reminding them that they ' _needed to get this down-pact if they didn't want to crash and burn on opening night,'_ with the same seriousness and inflection as a drill sergeant, and Maybe-Zeke turned completely away from him and sat up straight in his chair, listening intently.

They started from Act IV.

 

Richie Tozier caught the bus home for the first time since freshman year and was absolutely _not_ happy about it, not one bit.

It was loud. And not the sort of loud that he liked, either. He could deal when the radio was turned up a bit too much and he could deal with sitting close to the speakers at the cinema, but he was finding it difficult to cope with the barrage of voices, all talking about different things, all coming from different directions, so messy and muddled that he couldn't have isolated a single conversation if he tried. It was the kind of loud that was impossible to block out, one that left you feeling disoriented and miserable. And to add to that, he had to _stand,_ because by the time he had gotten on all the seats were already filled. Also, the guy standing in front of him was apparently the perfect height to elbow him in the face as he reached up to grip one of the handholds. He didn't even apologise.

So his nose hurt, and his legs were still aching from when he was forced to run in P.E, and he was positively _dying_ for a cigarette.

But, he bravely soldiered through and eventually disembarked at his stop, thanking the driver with a wink and a finger gun that sadly went unreturned. The doors swung shut behind him with a squeal and the exhaust pipe let out a cloud of grog at the back of the bus, before it pulled away from the curb and accelerated towards it's next destination at an exhilarating 27 miles per hour.

And he thought, with a sigh, that at least the worst of it was over. He could go home and hide in his room and wait for everything to fix itself by the time the sun rose the next morning.

Richie had a lesson to learn about speaking too soon.

In the two minutes and forty-three seconds it took for him to drag his tired feet along the pavement – still covered in reflective patches from the rain that hit on and off for the past few days –, across the cobblestone driveway and up the front porch steps, it didn't seem to at all occur to him that he was without his keys.

The realisation did hit him, however, once he had both his feet planted on the welcome mat – _bless this mess –_ with his right hand slipping into the back pocket of his jeans, and the jagged metal that he expected to find there was noticeably missing.

He cursed under his breath before throwing his head back in disdain, clenching his jaw and shooting an exhausted, yet still deadly, glare skywards – or at least, to the yellowing and bulb-less light fixture above the doorframe. He angrily jiggled the doorknob a few times, knowingly in futility, but still.

The absence of parked vehicles in the driveway told him that neither of his parents were home, so he knew ringing the doorbell was useless. Besides, even if they were home, he still looked remarkably unlike his usual self, and while his parents were oblivious to much of his personal life, they were rather well informed on his rivalry with the boy next door, due to a mix of calls from the principal and Richie's incessant need to talk to them as often as he could, about any subject he could think of. Seeing Eddie Kaspbrak awaiting invitation into their home, and their son's bedroom, would definitely cause suspicion and, most likely, questioning.

So he found himself left with an option that he wasn't particularly fond of.

 

The Kaspbrak's front lawn was overgrown. This wasn't exactly new information to Richie; he had seen it plenty of times, having lived in close proximity to it for his entire life. He could even see a small corner of it from his bedroom window, if he leaned out far enough. It wasn't really an interesting tidbit, either. Lots of people have overgrown lawns, for a lot of different, boring reasons, be them busyness or apathy or old age. It wasn't even _that_ overgrown, really, not like some others he had seen, surrounding old houses where the yellowing grass brushes your knees and weeds have started crawling up the fence and growing through the cracks in the pavement. There was nothing eye-catching or noteworthy about the degree as to which it was overgrown – it just simply was, and had been for a long time. And there was no logical reason as to why he took any notice of the fact at all. But still, he did. The observation made it's way to the forefront of his mind and led to him wondering why.

You see, Richie's front lawn wasn't overgrown; it was actually rather nice. He mowed it every Sunday in exchange for a five dollar bill from his father. (Sure, the pay wasn't great, but it was usually enough for him to fill his Sadie's cravings for the week. Sometimes he could even score a couple extra bucks if he offered to de-weed the flowerbeds or water his mother's peonies.) A lot of the people he knew had a similar deal going with their parents. It wasn't too hard a task, even for Richie, who had the upper body strength of a toddler. And Eddie was, as much as he'd hate to admit it, quite a bit stronger than he was, undoubtedly capable of pushing a lawnmower around for twenty minutes, most likely while hardly breaking a sweat. And they definitely _owned_ a lawnmower, he had seen it sitting in their backyard, up against the side of the house. Basically, the front lawn hadn't a reason to be as unkept as it was, or at least not one that he could see.

Then again, Richie hadn't met Sonia... yet.

He turned the doorknob as slowly as he could, stepping over the rolled-up newspaper that had been thrown onto the porch and hadn't been collected. He knew that his bedroom window was unlocked – the latch was busted – so if he could just get upstairs to Eddie's room, it would be easy to climb across the roof into his own. All he had to do was get there without anything else going wrong.

The door opened with a near silent creak, granting him access to the extremely daunting, slightly dusty, pattern-wallpapered entry hallway. He could hear the television in the next room, though the volume was low enough that he couldn't quite make out what was being said. The stairs were only ten feet away. He took a step –

“Eddie-bear!”

_Jesus fuck. Eddie-bear?_

He turned his head towards the source of the exclamation – a woman of ample proportions, sitting with her feet propped up in a floral-print fabric armchair that was reclined most of the way, wearing slippers and a bright teal tracksuit that clashed horrendously with … everything. She had horn-rimmed reading glasses hanging from a thin rope around her neck and was currently painting her fingernails an alarming shade of orange, an open home and garden magazine sitting ignored on her lap. If she hadn't been sitting in his living room, Richie wouldn't have guessed she and Eddie were even slightly related.

She wasn't looking at him directly, still swapping her attention between the television screen and her pudgy fingers. He was sort of glad, because he was sure his jaw must have dropped halfway to China.

“How was school?” she asked, in the same tone people use when talking to young children – light and full of faux interest. Richie must've hesitated, because she looked up at him, head tilted ever so slightly in concern.

“Great!” he replied, a little too enthusiastically. “It was just, it was awesome. Great day at school. Learning and, uh, stuff.” He grinned, moving to lean against the wall but missing it and nearly falling over. “Nothin' beats learnin', that's what I always say.”

“Oh!” she replied, thin eyebrows raised in surprise. “Are you feeling okay, sweetheart? You're acting a little strange.”

“Never better,” he assured, though she looked anything but convinced.

“Are those grass stains on your knees, Eddie? You know how I feel about you rolling around on that field, especially when it's wet.” Richie bent his head down to see a small patch of green contrasting against the light denim of his jeans. “Your allergies might start acting up. And you really should be wearing warmer clothes. Don't want you getting sick.”

“I'm fine, really-”

“Good boys don't talk back, Eddie-bear,” she interrupted, the tone of her voice suddenly gone harsh. “Go get that jacket out of the upstairs closet, I want you wearing it outside until the weather gets warm again.”

Richie nodded quickly, taking the opportunity to escape. He bounded up the stairs, hooking a right turn and scampering towards Eddie's bedroom. He closed the door behind him, throwing his backpack to the floor and kicking it across the room for good measure.

 

Eddie was given a ride home by Maybe-Zeke, whose name actually turned out to be Tim, and who drove a vista cruiser with plush dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and had a tape stuck in the cassette plater so all they could listen to was All Through The Night by Cyndi Lauper. And while Tim may have known all the words, he definitely did not know the key, or how to drive without nearly killing his passengers multiple times.

Still, Eddie got home in one piece, and managed not to verbally abuse his driver nearly as much as he wanted to.

In the end, play rehearsal hadn't been a total disaster. Sure, he missed most of his cues, didn't know any of the stage directions, and had to be corrected on every second word, but at least he didn't fall off the stage and snap his neck. So really, only a moderate disaster.

He walked into Richie's house after finding a spare key under the doormat, and went upstairs, eager to get out of the dress shirt that he had realised too late was a size and a half too small. Although, when he reached the second floor, the bedroom door was already open.

Richie was lying on his bed, wearing a t-shirt with _World's #1 Grandpa_ printed on the front and checkered pyjama pants, both items very much too big for the body he was occupying.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asked, sounding more tired than he had expected himself to.

“What are _you_ doing? This is my house,” he retaliated, sitting up and glaring at the other.

“You can't sleep in here.”

Richie scoffed.

“There's no way I'm sleeping in your bed. I already have to deal with your everything else.” He laid back down, putting his arms behind his head. “Now fuck off. I need to figure out how to asphyxiate in my sleep.”

“Well, if my mom comes into my bedroom and sees your gangly homeless looking ass in my bed she will either call the police or have a heart attack, so.”

“Not my problem.”

Eddie huffed, frustrated, looking around the room for a moment before crossing over to the bed. Richie barely got the first syllable of another insult out before Eddie yanked the sheets out from under him, sending him toppling off the side of the bed with a yelp. Eddie quickly took his place, planting himself on the mattress and grinning smugly as Richie winced in pain.

“What the fuck, shortstack?”

“I told you,” Eddie replied, “you can't sleep in here.”

“You're a piece of work, y'know?” he said, slowly standing up while rubbing at his hip where it had collided with the floor.

Eddie shrugged, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Richie rolled his eyes.

“Fine. But I swear to god, if you go through my shit, I will beat the life out of you.”

Eddie laughed, short and sour.

“I'd like to see you try.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahAHAHAHSFHAKFSGKJDLJHBFSGDJADKL  
> this took 3 months to write :') i legit thought it would never get finished obfsjnadk  
> its kinda baD tho lmao  
> and short :(  
> buT hope you liked it anyway
> 
> pls leave comments and fuel my ego <3
> 
> tumboler: @kinghanscom


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